Online Trading
You do not need to be a fence-sitter in terms of making decisions on your future equity and ETF trades when you tap the power of Merrill Edge. Reuters

Investing and personal wealth management were made more accessible by Bank of America Merrill Lynch with its so-called online trading platform Merrill Edge.

Launched in June this year, the online trading platform Merrill Edge had so far given discounted fees to clients and placed it neck and neck with competitors TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab.

Targeting new and current clients with assets worth $250,000 or less, Merrill Edge is giving some interesting perks worth exploring and worth your time.

Clients of Merrill Lynch Bank of America with balances worth no less than $25,000 in their accounts can actually make 30 equity or ETF trades for free.

If the 30 free trades were exceeded in a month, a very minimal fee of $4.95 to $8.95 per trade is asked from clients.

The online trading platform could be customised according to the clients' preference and if you think that you need an advisor before conducting a trade, Merrill Edge has made advisors consultation via phone.

"What is important is that clients can make their own investment decisions on their own or they can seek some financial advice before making a move from the phone-based Merrill Edge Advisory Centre," the company said in a statement.

Merrill Edge allows the combined expertise of Merrill Lynch-Bank of America a chance to be tapped clients across all wealth segments and "across all life with the full breadth of solutions - cash management to investments," the statement further explained.

Bank of America-Merrill Lynch is among the top three major players in the global financial advisory business with $1.45 trillion in assets under management. This places it on second closely following Morgan Stanley with $1.5 trillion in terms of assets under management.

Advisorone.com, a leading online financial resource said that what made the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch stand out is the average assets managed per advisor, which is about $97 million per financial advisor as compared to Morgan Stanley's $88 million, while UBS with no less than $100 million on average for its 6,900 FAs for the region with $690 billion in assets.

You do not need to be a fence-sitter in terms of making decisions on your future equity and ETF trades when you tap the power of Merrill Edge.