topic Re: Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML in Personal Finance

Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML

xenon3030 — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 20:24:35 GMT

I have my employee stock plan with Etrade and I want to move some of my assets from etrade to ML. The motivation is keeping sufficient asset with BOA/ML to gain golden premium rewards tier or higher. I also have a small SUB from ML to transfer assets ($100, if transferring 20k; the SUB can be as high as $600 if transferring higher).

Based on my phone call with Etrade, the stock cost information gets lost after this transfer and I need to save them. Does it make a very complext tax situation, if in future I want to see the transferred stocks at ML? The stocks include RSU/ESPP. If yes, is it recommended to simply sell the stocks now and transfer cash to ML (will have some capital losss, if I sell now, but on the other hand, I can buy cheaper stocks since several stocks are in dip)?

Also, I am not sure the way to transfer stocks from the Etrade stock plan to my Etrade brokerage account, prior starting the external transfer. Does anyone know whether it can be done manually? If I ask an operator, is there any fee associated to it?

At the end, it looks like several reddit users disagree with BOA/ML ecosystem benefits vs Etrade. Can somebody provide comparison between them?

Re: Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML

NoMoreE46 — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 20:54:07 GMT

RSU and ESPP are sellable?

Re: Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML

xenon3030 — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 21:02:41 GMT

Yes.

Re: Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML

MarkintheHV — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 21:42:17 GMT

wrong reply.

Re: Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML

xenon3030 — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 21:45:53 GMT

401k roll-over is simple and I did it from Fidelity to ML. It sells the asset, and afterward, sends a check to deposit to the new 401k or IRA account.

For stock transfer, it is not straightforward. After several thoughts, I decided to sell some of the stocks and transfer only cash to ML. By this way, the tax complication gets minimized and I will buy other stocks that can perform better on ML. So, the loss gets also minimized.

Re: Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML

NoMoreE46 — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 22:57:55 GMT

Did the rep mention "Transfer in kind?"

Re: Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML

xenon3030 — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 23:08:14 GMT

@NoMoreE46 wrote:
Did the rep mention "Transfer in kind?"

No. Anyway, the communication to Etrade is restricted to phone call and there is no chat or message. This will make it more time consuming to do a simple work like internal stock transfer from stock plan to brokerage.

So, I gave up and cashed some of my recently purchased ESPP and will transfer them to ML.

Re: Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML

markbeiser — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 03:42:20 GMT

When I moved stocks to ML, I just sold them and transferred the money, then rebought on ML.
I actually ended up with more shares for the same money, had some realized losses to help with taxes, and ended up ahead of where I was!
Moving my Roth IRA was very straightforward.
I just wish ML had an HSA that allows you to invest the money in it.

Re: Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML

MarkintheHV — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 22:36:36 GMT

@markbeiser wrote:
When I moved stocks to ML, I just sold them and transferred the money, then rebought on ML.
I actually ended up with more shares for the same money, had some realized losses to help with taxes, and ended up ahead of where I was!
Moving my Roth IRA was very straightforward.
I just wish ML had an HSA that allows you to invest the money in it.

I pulled from ML to E*Trade and did not sell before transferring. Hit a rough patch, lost a bunch in those several days while the transfer went through, but, eventually made it back.

Re: Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML

xenon3030 — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 22:45:26 GMT

It looks like Etrade hates any transfer to ML . It was the case for me, not sure whether it is a general issue. I started to request a transfer from ML website to pull from my Etrade (stock or even cash only) and in all the requests, the transfer got rejected by the Etrade operator within 24h. Finally, I gave up and tranferred cash from Etrade to Chase and afterward, to ML. This indirect route worked. Not sure why Etrade does not like ML.

Re: Transfer stocks from Etrade to ML

iced — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 14:45:56 GMT

@xenon3030 wrote:
I have my employee stock plan with Etrade and I want to move some of my assets from etrade to ML. The motivation is keeping sufficient asset with BOA/ML to gain golden premium rewards tier or higher. I also have a small SUB from ML to transfer assets ($100, if transferring 20k; the SUB can be as high as $600 if transferring higher).

Based on my phone call with Etrade, the stock cost information gets lost after this transfer and I need to save them. Does it make a very complext tax situation, if in future I want to see the transferred stocks at ML? The stocks include RSU/ESPP. If yes, is it recommended to simply sell the stocks now and transfer cash to ML (will have some capital losss, if I sell now, but on the other hand, I can buy cheaper stocks since several stocks are in dip)?

Also, I am not sure the way to transfer stocks from the Etrade stock plan to my Etrade brokerage account, prior starting the external transfer. Does anyone know whether it can be done manually? If I ask an operator, is there any fee associated to it?

At the end, it looks like several reddit users disagree with BOA/ML ecosystem benefits vs Etrade. Can somebody provide comparison between them?

When I rolled stocks/ESPP/RSU from ETrade to Fidelity years ago, some of the cost basis information carried over and some did not. I spent an afternoon on Fidelity's platform updating cost basis quarter-by-quarter for ESPP and RSU stocks, but it's not a terrible amount of work unless you're talking about a decade of more of quarterly vests to update. You can do it one position at a time, but it will likely cost more and take longer. It's best to rip the bandaid off and move them all over, then whatever didn't auto-update fix manually in based on old statements from E-Trade.

Regarding your second topic, I wasn't a real fan of Etrade (they still charged per-trade at the time) and wanted to consolidate into Fidelity where I had a larger portfolio. I likewise didn't like Merrill's interface nor am I interested in doing more investing through them, so we moved our last brokerage account out of there to Fidelity this year (though our advisor there seems to be holding out hope of talking us into going back). Different people have different motivations, so you'll end up picking whichever works best for you personally. Each brokerage has its own pros and cons.