My Top 3

1. ThinkorSwim - www.thinkorswim.com - Great software for options trading and equities. Best customer service around. I've got comissions down to $7 flat - you can negotiate rates with these guys.

2. Interactive Brokers - www.interactivebrokers.com - Never tried them first hand, but if TOS ever goes sour, these are the guys I will go to. Commissions are fair, but some of the miscellaneous fees for the software they offer can add up if you don't meet certain trading thresholds.

3. TradeStation - www.tradestation.com - same arrangement about misc. fees that can add up - but as long as you trade "x" amount of times you are ok. I used they guys prior to coming over to TOS - and I liked them quite a bit. Very good for tracking trading stats, and for trading futures on their active trading platform. But when I was there, they didn't have any web-based trading site you could go to (a few years ago). Only software driven

My Bottom 3

1. TradeKing - www.tradeking.com - they chart an astronomical amount of money in 'hard-to-borrow" fees that alone makes these guys one of the worst brokers around.

2. E-Trade - www.etrade.com - a lot of people like these guys and use them a bit, but my experience with them is extremely cumbersome, and not easy to make sense of. With online trading you want your the trading site to be easily navigatable.

3. ShareBuilder (not SharePLANNER - LOL!) - yes $4 trades or whatever they are now, is great, but who the heck is limited to certain day of the week for trading. Maybe they've changed that now, but a loooooooong time I tried them out and they are just a little bit behind the times.

There are also a couple of relatively new ones out there that interest me such as SpeedTrader, tradeMONSTER and LightSpeed.

Check them out too in our Reviews at www.shareplanner.com/reviews/overview/di...ine-brokerages_c142/

A short write up I did on finding a good brokerage:

A brokerage is probably the most important tool to a trader. It handles all of a traders business, keeps track of all transactions, and could potentially control tens of thousands of dollars. Due to the huge spur of online discount brokers people are now shopping for the lowest commission cost. The brokerage world is just like everything else with you get what you pay for, so be careful going for the cheapest.

First thing to do is find out what kind of trader you are. When you know what kind of trader you are you can look for the things you need in a brokerage. A lot of new traders won't know what they need or want in a brokerage until they are already committed to someone.

Here are some things you might want to consider:

•Commission Cost - As I said before, having the lowest commission cost is not always the best, but having the highest is not always the best either. Make sure the commission cost reflect the services you will be given. Also make sure the commission cost are not so outrageous that you can't make any profits. Once you've been trading at that brokerage for awhile try to haggle down your commission price. Pay attention to the margin fees if you are opening a margin account.

•Customer Service - You might not think you will never need to call on customer service but trust me you will. Things will never go 100% right and you need to know there is a backend support system that can help. A lot of times a brokerage system will go down and you need to know you can pick up the phone and easily place, change, or cancel and order.

•Execution Speed - The speed at which an order will execute matters more if you are a day trader or an active swing trader. You don't want to place an order to buy something at a certain price and get a price filled at a higher price. This could severely cut into profits.

•Clearing Firm - A clearing firm is what processes all of the stock transactions. Knowing the clearing firm is important because they all have different sizes, fees, and rules.

•DRIP/Fraction Shares - If you are more into a buy and hold strategy you should find a brokerage that has DRIP (Dividend ReInvestment Program). This will use any dividends you receive and reinvest them back into that stock at no extra cost. What people should really keep an eye on is the Fractional Shares part. A lot of clearing firms do not support fractional shares, so if you are a small investor you will only receive cash if your dividend can't afford a whole share.

•Network - A lot of brokerages have a network for the investors. This allows investors to share their trades, ideas, and you can share yours. If this is something you are interested then check for this feature. A lot of great information can be learned from an investor network.

•Mobile Access - If you are interested in trading or watching your portfolio make sure they support mobile access with your mobile device.

•Integration with Other Financial Services - There are a couple of other financial services out there that people like to use, such as: mint.com. If you would like to integrate your portfolio into the rest of your finances make sure there is support for this.

•Option Levels - If you are or want to trade options some brokerages will put limits on what you can do. A lot of brokerages
assign levels to the various strategies you can do in accordance of how long you've been trading, net worth, and portfolio size. There are brokerages without levels, so match up what you want with what you can get.

•Short Selling - Short selling is not as cut and dry as going long, so it brings with it several things to look out for. The clearing firm size plays a big part in how easily it will be to find the shares you want to short. If you place an order to short a stock but they can't find it the order will never go through. There will also be "hard to borrow" fees and these fees can have a wide range from 0% to +100% of the transaction. You need to know these fees and how they will apply to your trading.

Like I said before it is usually not just cost that you need to look for when trying to pick a broker. There are far more important qualities in a good brokerage. Trading is a hard enough job without being set back by a bad broker.

I agree with Ryan. ThinkorSwim is definitely my number one broker. They are not perfect and have their problems every once in awhile but their tools available are worth the trouble. I still don't know what everything is inside the platform.

TradeKing is definitely the worst brokerage I have been too. I was a client of theirs before making the switch to TOS and I can say that I never looked back. They recently went through a conversion and it messed up their whole system

I am using IB since about 10 years and was perhaps one of the first customer in Germany. Now they have even a fast customer service. There is no fee for the platform only if you want reuternews.(or 10 $if no activity) They have now even nice charts. Beside this you can use the quoutes for usage in oter chartprogs,

I have really thought about switching to IB. Their cost structure is a bit weird but I think I get the basics of it. If I were to leave TDA I would probably head there.

I like TDA for the most part...and since I've been with them a while I'm down to $5 trades.

Had a problem with one of their operators one time who dis-enrolled me from DRIP when I didn't ask them too, then went back and purchased shares in two companies I had rec'd dividends from without asking me first.

Ended up with some free trades out of that one, so overall I've been pleased with them.

BigApple So you don't have to pay anything outside the commissions for trading? That's pretty exciting if that's the case - May have to revisit who I trade with then.

Cervelorider I've been with TDA and Thinkorswim since 2005 and they can get me pretty perturbed at times for sure, but usually things go well with them. But $5 trades? that is quite impressive. I need to call them up because I'm getting $7 and didn't think I could get them to go any lower than that. So thanks for the heads up there.

That sucks though about the DRIP issue, they should've have probably reinstated you for the fair/present value of those stocks if you had never been taken out of it. I had them do that one time. You have to fight them a bit for it, but usually they come around.

yeah I did...I was more than a bit upset, but they did resolve it. I simply told them that other brokerages offered $5 trades (this was two years ago, not sure how current that info is) and I have my account, two ROTH accounts and two custodian accounts, so I tried to leverage that and they came around. Was thinking recently to ask again for another rate reduction...hey you don't ask you don't get!!

eh....no luck!

-----------------
Mr. XXXXX,

Thank you for your e-mail. We feel our commissions are fair based on the value we provide clients and are not able to lower your commission any further than the current deeply discounted rate of $5 for each stock trade placed online. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

Thank you for choosing TD Ameritrade.


Robert Wunderlich
Apex Client Services, TD Ameritrade
Division of TD Ameritrade, Inc.

lol, good try though. I know several traders that have the $5 commissions because they have been with TDA for a long time. Wish I could score that kind of deal

I talked to Thinkorswim this morning and no luck either. Still at the flat-$7 trades. They did offer .01/share with $1 min, with max of $7.95 but I'd very rarely benefit from the .01/share, and would likely be paying $7.95 more times than not. So I declined the offer.

Yeah that is not a very good deal. Rare I would trade less than 795 shares. Did they give you a reason why they wouldn't lower you?

They based it on some scale - but I just talked to another person who's getting it for $6/trade "C'MON MAN!"

Going to call them tomorrow, and try again. Wouldn't say I have high hopes, but we'll see.