5 Top Online Stock Brokers
Investors should know the best online stock brokers to trade with. The following top online brokers offer traders the most value for their investment portfolios.
Some online brokers are known for their award winning customer service while others are known for inexpensive or even free stock trades. This review will highlight the best brokers available.
1. Zecco
Zecco with its free stock trades is one of the best stock brokers for any investor regardless of how often they trade. The main advantages of choosing Zecco are:
- The first 10 trades each month are free
- No Account Minimums
- Access to the ZeccoShare Community of over 150,000 investors
Zecco has the best offering as far as trade commissions are concerned. This discount broker has done a very good job building its online stock community from scratch and even let’s members share trade ideas right on the site. When comparing online brokers in the end $0 stock trades are hard to beat. –> Open an Account.
2. TradeKing
TradeKing has emerged to become one of the top brokers for online stock trading because of its $4.95 flat fee trades, its award winning customer service, and investor experience overall. Like Zecco, TradeKing also has a very popular and growing community of investors. Broker highlights include:
- $4.95 trades with no hidden fees
- Ranked #1 Discount Broker by SmartMoney two years in a row
- Account protection up to $25 million
The awards TradeKing has won in recent years has helped to fuel its success as a discount broker, and with its strong advertising budget TradeKing only continues to grow each day. –> Open an Account.
3. TD Ameritrade
TD Ameritrade offers a great combination of both competitive trade prices, customer service, and research tools. What investors need to know to compare TD Ameritrade in a nut shell is:
- Flat-rate $9.99 commissions
- 13,000+ mutual funds
- Apex which I will explain more below
- Award Winning Customer Service
I have used their Apex service (which is their upgraded service) for a few years now and it has been nothing short of great. You get all of your service fees wiped which means everything that other stock brokers charge you with for regarding your account are free with Apex. Investors are also hooked up on the research side with more of their services for free including Streamer, level II quotes, advanced analyzer, etc. Top it off with award winning customer service and you got a grand package. They bought out TD Waterhouse (Vice the TD now in front of Ameritrade). Lastly, they were voted #1 by Barron’s for the 2007 review of online brokers, have over 6 million clients, and are publicly traded under the stock symbol AMTD.
4. Scottrade
Scottrade is well known for their customer service, which is represented by the many awards the discount broker has won. They boast 290 local branch offices in the United States, and also have flat-rate commissions of $7 per trade. The main points:
- Flat-rate $7 Trades
- Only $500 to Open an Account
- Great Investment Research Tools
The Scottrade Elite service is a well built and valuable asset for any experience trader. Scottrade is not publicly traded though and is a privately held corporation. Their customer service is outstanding, they have a Chinese division, and they are a top player in the online broker market with their few million plus clients.
5. Etrade
Etrade is another online broker ranked in the elite. Investors can trade for as low as $6.99 depending on the account (Similar to Fidelity). The main deal with Etrade is they are one of the big brokers leading the way into the home mortgages business, offering checking accounts, credit cards, and the works. Etrade highlights include:
- 24/7 Help with everything from phone to professional investment guidance
- 7,000 mutual funds with low commissions
- 3.3% Return High Yield Savings Accounts
- Nearly $180 Billion in customer assets
- International (See also our Interactive Brokers Review for international trading)
With the recent push by top online brokers for account security, Etrade has lead the way. When it comes to protecting your assets while they sit in your trading account encryption security keys and other great tools are offered. Overall Etrade is another strong discount broker with a lot to offer, and they have definitely earned every bit of positive feedback they have received over the years since going public in 1996 under symbol ETFC.
–> Open An Account.
6*. ShareBuilder
ShareBuilder leads the industry when it comes to automatic investing plans. Most people know ShareBuilder by their $4 (Just like Zecco for their $0 Trades and TradeKing with $5 Trades) commissions on stock trading, but don’t be caught up in the hype, there is a catch. To take advantage of the $4, you need to be on one of their automatic investing plans. They have done a great job though of catering to this market and house some good features:
- Retirement Accounts
- High yield savings accounts
- Research Tools to explore stocks and ETFs
In 2008 ShareBuilder was bought out by ING and is now part of the ING Direct family. Alongside stock trades now offered are also bank accounts, cds, and other investments.
Full Stock Brokers Reviews:
- Zecco
- TradeKing
- ShareBuilder
- TD Ameritrade
- Scottrade
- Fidelity
- Etrade
- OptionsXpress
- Interactive Brokers
More on Online Stock Brokers:
- 12 Ways to Compare Your Online Broker
- Understanding Flat-Fee Trades
- How to Get Free Real Time Quotes
- View All
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I recently switched from from Scottrade to Fidelity. The main reason was that I don’t usually keep most my money invested at all times because I like to pick and choose shorter term trades. My non-invested money at Fidelity earns 4.98% APY. Scottrade is in the 3’s and I believe they just recently raised it.
In this regard, TD Ameritrade seems really low (2.9% apy max if over 200K) and I haven’t found anyone who can match fidelity in this aspect. Not sure about etrade.
Something to keep in mind if you are like me.
Oh, and Sharebuilder sucks.
This is the third try at entering a comment. Here goes. I just completed selling 500 shares of a penny stock ( CPST ) through Scottrade what-with their $7 trades and that $7 trade cost me $21 as there were no All-or-None options offered so there were three different trades, what a deal, have anyone else experienced this result with their brokers ? At this rate maybe land line trades are comming back for me.
[...] list of the top 5 online stock brokers and their best attributes.read more | digg [...]
Blain, do you have any experience with Interactive Brokers? Around here, they are certainly the lowest cost online brokerage.
I have actually heard pretty good things about Interactive Brokers, no complaints for sure. For Canada I can imagine they are pretty well known, what other brokers are well known up there?
The 5 big banks all offer brokerage accounts. In terms of non bank brokerages, the popular ones are: Interactive Brokers, E-Trade, Questrade, the credit unions, and Shareowner.
[...] 5 Top Online Stock Brokers - A list of top five online stock brokers and their best attributes. See what the big boys have to offer. [...]
It all depends on what you’re gonna be trading. If you’re just trading stocks and options, I don’t think any of them are gonna be bad, probably all deliver about the same. So you might as well go with who ever does it the cheapest!
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I hated E-Trade. If you own anything that you just want to sit on for a while or spend some time not actively trading, you get hit with all sorts of “account maintenance fees”. Not to mention it was costing $15 a trade. I switched to Scottrade. $7 Trades, no maintenance fees if you want to sit on things for a while and really great customer service…
Ya actually I found this out recently and it kind of bugged me. To quality for the $6.99 trades you have to have like a $5ok account and trade xx times a month or something ridiculous. Definitely designed for the very active trader.
Can someone help - I’m looking not for a broker but just a service provider that offers real-time streaming market data… Any ideas?
Thanks!
Emailed ya
Sogoinvest offers stock trading at $3 per trade. The strategies of fractional share investing, compound return, diversification, and dollar cost averaging, which are essential in a long-term investment plan are some of the features which make sogoinvest stand out from others.Whether you are a beginner or expert, this broker offers you everything.
i agree - i’ve had great experience with TDA.
i tried opening an account with Zecco but couldn’t even get past that stage for 2 weeks. TDA takes 15 mins online.
Stay away from TDAmeritrade, many people have now lost money due to their advice to clients in Money Markey accounts they were promoting that failed! To date we have not seen one penny of our money and am not promised anything. People have their lives on hold as their entire lifes saving is in this recommended fund. Ameritrade has given little support to any of its clients of these funds
Please read:
I and hundreds of other customers at TD Ameritrade hold shares in a related fund, Reserve Yield Plus Fund – Class R (RYPQX), which is in a similar situation with assets frozen but with no announcement of a distribution plan or even amount (current guess is $0.97/sh). Being considerably smaller than the Primary Fund, RYPQX (about $1 billion) is getting much less attention by The Reserve, TDAM, and the press. About a year or so ago, TDAM dropped its own money market fund and steered customers into RYPQX, billing it as a safe money market fund with a stable value of $1.00 per share. Careful reading of the
prospectus, which few customers received, however, reveals that RYPQX is really a short-term bond fund that by some accounting magic The Reserve `attempts to maintain’ a price of $1.00/sh……which it did until October. Not being an official MMF, it is not eligible for the new Treasury guarantee, and nor is TDAM offering to backstop RYPQX as
it has done for customers of the Primary Fund - even though their `advisors’ told or inferred to their customers that it was indeed a MMF.
I have both TDAmeritrade and ETrade accounts. I use the Ameritrade account more because of the cheaper commissions. ETrade definitely has better research of stocks and mutual funds, but unless you have a lot of money in the account, there is no discount on trading commissions.
The Top 5 Online Brokers
Tonight I wanted to take a look at some of the top online brokers that investors should look at when opening an account online. There are numerous online brokers out there for investors to research, but not all of them…
[...] 5 Top Online Stock Brokers [...]
[...] the charting software will tie in news and fundamental data. I personally use TD Ameritrade as my top stock broker, and they have a decent layout. The best part about taking advantage of the free charting tools [...]
[...] every loan, there is an interest rate for what you borrow. In the case of the stock market, your online stock broker typically will charge somewhere around 8% a year on borrowed funds (depending on how much capital [...]
I’m in the UK and signed up with Etrade, the UK branch. It costs £8.95 to make a trade. Expensive, but one of the cheapest I’ve found. Thanks for the heads up.
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I have Ameritrade and they are not so hot. I am not satisfied with their “command center” software that they use to help monitor the market (like eSignal). It’s very slow and kills my computer memory, lots of hiccups. My computer is a pretty decent gaming computer and should run this stuff just fine. I actually pay $125 a month to get eSignal and it works like a dream, charts and tons of quotes, it never slows my computer down and works flawlessly. So the blame is on Ameritade for poor optimization of their software. Also, not sure if this is standard but the 3 day buy settle is really annoying because if I sell before 3 days, my money is just held up and I can’t get into another position. They have way too many restrictions on certain things, but I am sure they aren’t the only ones.
I have been momentum trading with Scottrade Elite. Everything is real-time and the charting/layout possibilities are almost endless. However, I have run into problems with hot stocks experiencing heavy volume and not being able to sell short. A message comes up that no short shares are available or, for example, only 50 shares are available when I want to short 1,000. Scottrade says I can call the branch and they can try to locate short shares from other sources, but this is not always convenient. Are there other trading companies that don’t/won’t have this problem because I am considering switching? It is a shame because everything else about Scottrade is fantastic.
Ya know I have found this same problem with TD Ameritrade. Sometimes there simply just aren’t any shares available to short on certain stocks. I think that this all boils down to your timing and the stock because to be able to short your broker has to borrow shares against someone else’s account (I think I said that correctly). So, basically the bigger the network of portfolios the better your odds of getting shares to short. That is my understanding atleast, and thus if you are trying to short a stock that everyone is already actively selling and shorting then your odds of getting shares to short are slim.
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I was just looking up comparisons of online brokers as I found this article. Good read, great comparisons. Thanks.
i’m just curious why you didn’t include IB (interactivebrokers) as one of the top 5 … IB can easily beats those on your list …
anyway you might have your own reason but still …
cheers …
Blain, Do you think you’ll ever review prop trading firms, or the direct access trading companies?
I’d have to agree with the previous post by stocktube… IB is a much better platform if you’re serious about trading.
I have a trading buddy who still uses etrade, and I have an acct. too. Yet, you can’t beat the margin prop trading firms allow, or the speed and low commissions of direct access.
Mike
Blain,
When I’m referring to direct access, I’m basically targeting online brokers that use realtick, esignal, IB type platforms.
As for prop trading firms, there are many, with many options. Heres a post on a list of firms Trader’s Narrative put together.
http://www.tradersnarrative.com/list-of-proprietary-trading-firms-735.html
One of my trading buddies just started using a prop firm. He has up to 50x margin. You can see the advantage of that. With just $5,000, you could have 250k in buying power. Of course, they won’t just hand you that type of buying power without restrictions in place. Mike
Mike
Craziness, thanks for posting this info, I never knew that kind of leverage even existed
How to Invest in the Stock Market
Step 1 - Sign up with a Stock BrokerWe recommend using a reputable online broker. They are easy to use…
I’m surprised no one mentioned Tradestation. I’ve been using them for about 11 months and its great. I probably only use 5% of the features and can’t imagine using anything else. Their order matrix and radar screen is great for active traders.
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You should have Interactive Brokers and Think or Swim on there. If you’re an active trader, the brokers you mention will eat you up in commissions.
I have had Zecco for over seven months and am very happy with the account. I have moved most of my money from Scottrade to Zecco. I have had great customer service and I love the S&P Research at Scottrade but I would rather trade for free.
[...] Way to Learn: Open an account with a top online stock broker and use their free [...]
[...] came from one of my 19″ monitors, so click it to see the full screen view (credit due to TD Ameritrade, who is the broker I [...]
Good information. I’m in the process of deciding who to use, and between this article and a few others, Scottrade and TDAmeritrade are usually in the top rated.
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Thanks great article. Wish I had read it when I was looking for the right broker. I went with TD ameritrade though and they have been fine.
Cheers,
Andy
Tradestation is fine, I’ve used it but it’s for those who trade actively. If you don’t buy/sell shares up to 5000 per month then you’re charged 99.95. So for those who want to invest on a longer term basis it’s going to cost you 1200 bucks a year to maintain this account and if you have a $25,000 account that’s almost 12% or so p/a. That’s expensive.
But they’re excellent in terms of trades, streaming data etc.
At the moment I am deciding who to use. Taking the information from this article, I think I should keep using the companies that I am using. Thanks
based on the first comment i see i think this post was done around may last year. Does these recommendation still strong and true? i am a new investor looking for good broker to start with… am thinking to be short term investor as i am student and dont have much dedication and time- or should i be long term? oh crap i need to read more…
I use InteractiveBrokers and I am more than happy with them. I like paying less than $1 in fees for 100 shares, especially when I compare this with what my bank charged me for years…
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For the money, i use buyandhold.com. I must say that 15 bucks inlimited trades, is a nice thing. There are drawbacks but for the money it is worth it.
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I know you said that the best broker is not necessarily the cheapest one. However, I really like Firstrade because not only are they cheap, but they offer some features that others don’t such as free DRIPs. I guess the only downside is the lack of physical branches, but I don’t mind that because I can execute everything easily online. Their customer service is pretty good too.
Great info. Now if only some of the cheaper online brokers, i.e. Tradeking, Zecco, etc., could crack the top 5.
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You should only pick a broker after you know exactly what style of trading you are going to do. By example I use three different brokers. While I do a lot of trades with Scottrade I use Sharebuilder for my long term dividend plays because they do free dividend reinvestment. Scottrade does not do that. Those are the kind of things they don’t tell you in the advertisements.
http://raythemoneyman.blogspot.com
http://thealternativeenergyinvestor.blogspot.com
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If you want reliability stay away from Ameritrade. On high volume days such as today and most of this week you will get frequent time outs and will not be able to do much with the system let alone trade.
Their site is down again today as was the case earlier this week.
John
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