Good piece, would be nice to see you go into more detail on the "clicks of the mouse" needed to transfer securities between brokers.
I would be glad to elaborate on your comment. It is so easy to move money between brokers. Much more so than between bank accounts sometimes!
Go online to your broker of choice. On their landing page will be a link, usually written in huge letters, OPEN AN ACCOUNT. You'll give a few pages of info, and at the end you will be congratulated for opening an account. Then you will notice a link FUND YOUR ACCOUNT. You'll be given the option to either transfer money from one of your bank accounts or to transfer from another brokerage account. You can choose to do a FULL TRANSFER or PARTIAL TRANSFER. If you do a partial transfer you will be asked which securities/money to transfer. Occasionally I've had to take screen shots of my statements and attach them to my application.
The total process takes about 20 minutes. There can be some glitches that pop up from time to time. Sometimes the old broker will act ugly and want to charge you a fee to close the account. Often the new broker will pay this fee if you negotiate it up front (save email chains and chat screen shots.) Or you can leave a little bit of money or a few stocks in the old account and transfer most of your stuff to the new broker.
One other caveat. Always confirm the terms of the offer of cash bonuess or miles/points BEFORE you open the account. I like to do this by email or chat so I can save the transcript of conversations with CSRs.