The trend is good Fortunately, brokerage statements are evolving. For customers who have several types of investments, and possibly a checking account and credit card. Some firms, such as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Merrill Lynch and Salomon Smith Barney, provide a summary page with charts to clearly illustrate how the overall portfolio is performing. Horizontal account statements. You can lay out more columns of information on a page, with more space to spell out words, so abbreviations are minimized, says Alton Jones of Pershing, a division of DLJ that designs statements.
Some firms use the format only for premium statements.
Others, such as PaineWebber, Fidelity and Prudential, offer it to all customers. Prudential's Command account, for example, lets investors choose whether to list municipal bonds alphabetically or by date of maturity. PaineWebber's Resource Management account also lets customers customize. Many statements, especially for frequent traders, include tax information on the cost basis of each stock - the average share price, including commissions. That's especially helpful for investors whose dividends are reinvested, buying additional shares each quarter.