What's the best online brokerage?

I could not find any recent discussions on online brokerages. I was wondering what website would be best for a individual that wants to start trading. I will be investing less than $1000, so the lower the fees the better. Thanks.

31 Comments
 

After further researching robin hood, I think it would be the best option for me. I only intend to trade well known stocks for now anyways, and considering the small amount of money I will be investing, free trades will definitely help.

 

TDAmeritrade ThinkorSwim...because mkt data is free if you open a retirement account (retirement accounts get free mkt data at TD), and then link your other accounts. Its simple to do...is a good platform, and fees are decent.

$1000 is not much tho...$10/stock trade & $20/option trade fee is a big % at that size. You won't be able to trade futures either, cuz the account is too small. Better to save up to 3-4,000 before you try trading.

 

Fair point, but fees are waived if commissions are at least $10/mo, and for balances $2000 the commission hurdle is at $20/mo IIRC.

But again, the USP of IB that they do not require having a SSN to trade NYSE.

 

danydebrown, have you checked out these or run a search:

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  • More suggestions...

Any pros willing to rescue this discussion? psykang jdmorris mlistner

Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

SSE from Schwab is an amazing platform, they've got great customer service as well. I prefer Schwab just because of the platform though.

Array
 
Little Engine Would

That's really, really expensive.

oh ok. do you know a good online broker? I'm a student and I won't invest more than a fifth of my bank account, so it won't be a large sum. I don't intend to trade a lot, either. I want to pick a few and then hold them over a long period.

do you know a good online broker for people in my situation? btw I reside in the UK, but I'm from Germany, so either a German or a British broker would be good.

thank you!

 
Best Response
UK2013plus Little Engine Would:

That's really, really expensive.

oh ok. do you know a good online broker? I'm a student and I won't invest more than a fifth of my bank account, so it won't be a large sum. I don't intend to trade a lot, either. I want to pick a few and then hold them over a long period.

do you know a good online broker for people in my situation? btw I reside in the UK, but I'm from Germany, so either a German or a British broker would be good.

thank you!

For charting, I use ThinkOrSwim. For execution, I use OptionsHouse. I've done moderate research into the pros and cons of the various brokerages. A lot of them have great charting, but I like TOS. It has a lot of nice tools. Not that I use anything super sophisticated.

OptionsHouse has the cheapest trades I've found: $3.95 per equity trade. And they have various packages for options trades. The charting is ugly and not very efficient, which is why I have a free account with TOS which gets me real-time L2 quotes and charting, but execution is spot on. I haven't had an order fail to fill yet and the spread is the same as for any other brokerage I've looked into. Customer service is great. Their office is located right here in Chicago and I get a quick reply by somebody who actually has power to resolve my issue or knowledge to answer my question every time I've called.

This site was a good tool for me for screening brokerages: http://www.brokerage-review.com/

And I use this site to screen stocks: http://finviz.com/

If you don't like OptionsHouse for whatever reason, TradeKing is another good low-cost brokerage: https://www.tradeking.com/

Here's a blog that's helped me in the past: http://chartsignals.blogspot.com/2012_10_01_archiv...

This one's paid, but there's a free trial. It can help you minimize and track your tax liability: http://www.tradelogsoftware.com/tradelog/

 

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