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Home > Online Stock Brokers > Detailed Reviews |
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Scottrade has been seen and heard for more than 30 years. With over 290 US branch offices, many of us have actually driven by a Scottrade location and may not have even realized it. To complement their retail locations, Scottrade also provides an excellent online trading platform with a solid foundation and a long list of customers. Scottrade offers a flat $7 fee for online stock trades, competitive with other brokerages we reviewed. They also require a minimum of $500 to open an account Scottrade gets high marks for the amount and quality of educational resources offered to their customers. This is a good benefit to beginning investors who are just learning about stock investing. Scottrade is also well known for their customer service and have been historical award winners in this category. We found a few comments from experienced traders that felt the trading engine was not as perfect as they would have liked. Several felt the investment research tools and charts were not as user friendly as those found at some other online brokerages. Strangely, you can't make an electronic withdrawal of your funds from Scottrade. Instead, they require you to use a debit card or checks. We found this to be a needless inconvenience for a company specializing in online financial interactions. Overall, Scottrade is a solid online stock broker with fair priced trade prices and a low minimum opening balance requirement. Their customer service representatives are top-notch and they take great pains to make their trading platform intuitive and simple to use.
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ZECCO
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TD Ameritrade is one of the leading online stock brokers for several reasons. They make trading securities extremely simple and affordable for even the newest of traders.
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Zecco is a very good online stock broker for the cost-conscious investor. While they make it easy and inexpensive to trade stocks, you just need to keep in mind that there are some trade-offs that come along with their low fees.
Stock trades at Zecco are a flat $4.95, which is near the bottom of all the online brokerages we reviewed. For investors who plan to trade frequently, low transaction fees can save you a lot of money over the long run. They also have no minimum deposit requirement when you open a trading account, which is very appealing to the small investor that wants to take a dip in the stock trading water.
As far as getting up and running, you can create your stock trading account in as little as 10 minutes. There are no papers to mail in or lengthy forms to fill out. Once approved, you can start trading and monitoring stock prices with their free streaming quotes.
Our review of Zecco would be remiss if we didn't mention their active and helpful online community. Fellow Zecco users share trading strategies and investment ideas, and you can easily track top performing investors. Zecco prides itself on facilitating communication between their customers, and this is one area that sets Zecco apart form other online stock brokers.
While Zecco provides a very good stock trading platform, their low cost has some effects. The analysis tools they provide aren't as complete as the premier stock brokerages, and you can expect some delays if you need to use their customer service area.
Still, Zecco is a good online stock broker that provides a reliable trading platform. If you are a very small investor, or plan to trade very frequently, Zecco is definitely worth your consideration.
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OPTIONS XPRESS
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Options Xpress provides expert service for those interested in Options trading. Having said this, they also offer a broad range of broker services, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and even ETF's.
Getting started with Options Xpress is quick and easy. You simply fill out an online application, select how you want to fund your account, and you can be trading within minutes. There is no minimum deposit required unless you are trading options, where a minimum balance is required for the margin and premium payments that are needed with these instruments.
Options Xpress has a number of tools that you'll find useful in analyzing and executing your trades. As a customer you have access to robots that scan the markets for ideas based on your particular investing criteria; customizable charts to help you identify trends, and real-time current and stock quote prices so you can act instantly based on the most up-to-date information.
In addition to giving you the tools necessary to analyze and execute your trades, Options Xpress also provides some features you may not expect. For example, you have a "virtual" trading platform - which lets you execute trades through their system with "play" money. This is an excellent way to practice trading and learn more about areas that you may not be familiar with - while risking nothing. They also offer a range of webinars and instructional videos to help you learn about different aspects of the market.
>Options Xpress provides each customer $500,000 in account protection. Should something happen to this company, your assets are safe up to $500,000.
Options Xpress offers a good value for those wanting to buy and sell not only options but other securities as well. They provide an impressive array of tools to help you learn about the markets and trading, and give you a chance to practice with their virtual trading platform. Options Xpress receives high marks in our review.
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CHARLES SCHWAB
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As a result of its large size, customer base and balance sheet, Schwab has resources available to provide technology offering the latest in news and investment information. Schwab offers a full service product for those wanting to trade online any investment vehicle available today but not at the best price.
Schwab offers customers a sort of tiered approach to pricing transactions. Generally speaking, each trade is $8.95 but those prices can run lower if you are transacting 30 or more trades each month. However, the minimum balance is $2,500 to open and thus excludes some investors looking to transact in the lower range.
Schwab also offers a bilingual customer service team that is very helpful to those with English as their second language. The Schwab trading website has a number of resources and analysis information available. The trading platform was generally easy to use and we had very few questions in our first attempt to navigate a trade.
Overall, we were impressed with Schwab's full service approach to handling stock investments. However, we were a little less impressed with the cost per transaction and most definitely the minimum deposit requirement.
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SOGO TRADE
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Sogo Trade offers a low budget online stock broker service. We found the no frills site to be free of the unneeded extras that some of the massive companies provided and that we had to spend time sorting through. However, sometimes low budget can mean lower quality and we found that in some cases with Sogo Trade.
The trading engine and overall website was more than we expected for their $3.00 flat rate fee. The fee is clearly the cheapest in the industry of any online brokers. However, Sogo Trade does not handle all investment choices. While you can cheaply trade stocks they do not currently offer education plans. They also don't offer mutual fund trading or IRA accounts.
The research tools and analytical security information were lacking as well. Be prepared to do your own research on Google, along with what Sogo Trade can provide, before placing your trade.
Sogo Trade provides a $500,000 in account coverage in the event the online stock broker fails. This is important to know and understand when deciding how much to place with this online stock broker given the current environment.
In the end, we felt that Sogo Trade is probably a good option for some in the market that already have their own investment information sources and that are only trading stocks at this time. For those that are interested in funding their IRA or kids college, we suggest you look at the higher ranked companies for assistance.
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TRADE MONSTER
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Trade Monster offers a relatively low cost trading platform. With a $2000 minimum deposit required, Trade Monster gives most investors the opportunity to own a piece of the pie.
Through our research we found recounts of investors dissatisfied with the level of investment charts available on Trade Monster. Also, the website organization was ranked lower on a list. We had to search much longer on the Trade Monster website to locate the details we were looking for.
The customer service team is generally responsive but overall the company has only been in business a very short time and that brought us much concern with even the largest and most successful brokers shutting their doors in 2008.
Trade Monster is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) and provides a protection on assets up to $100,000 for cash balances. Any cash balances maintained for the purpose of interest accrual are not protected. The SIPC also covers $500,000 in assets.
Overall, we couldn't find any reason over the competition to choose Trade Monster. The per trade cost, minimum balance, website organization and functionality were no better than the higher ranked companies.
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SURE TRADER
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Sure Trader is a relatively new online broker based in the Bahamas that offers very low trade fees for a very basic trading service, with some questionable hidden fees and issues with customer service.
The products are limited to equities, options and ETF, so if you’re looking to trade futures, bonds, mutual funds or other types of investments, you won’t have that option Sure Trader. The website is bare bones. There are no research tools, third party analysis or anything other than a basic trading terminology glossary to assist the prospective investor in analyzing the market. We saw a notice that Barron’s had given then four stars for usability, but when we clicked on the link it just took us back to the made Sure Trader page. There were no other accolades or awards and no testimonials. Really there is not much other than a link to their pricing structure and a link to open an account.
Curious about this we went out to the internet and found many negative comments from clients that had serious problems with everything from setting up accounts, to the technology timing out and not completing trades, to poor customer service. The one advantage customers did note was that since the company is based outside of the United States there is no day trader limit, meaning you can make as many trades as you want in a given day.
Because there is no trading limit, Sure Trader’s niche seems to be shorting stocks including penny stocks, and at $4.95 per trade they have the lowest fees of any online broker we reviewed. However there are some sizable hidden costs such as a $179 per month platform fee that they will waive if you generate that much in commission. Also since they are offshore you are charged $100 for any money wiring…if you want to withdraw funds from your account for example, you will pay $100 to do so. Also there is no toll free customer service so you’re even going to have to pay to talk to a representative.
As a niche day trading platform, Sure Trader may offer some value to some investors. However with limited products, hidden fees, questionable customer service and technology we would recommend the average investor look elsewhere for an online broker service.
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OPTIONS HOUSE
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Options House has also been in business for only a short time. They specialize in options trading and offer a great per contract price and low minimum deposit. However, being the cheapest isn't always something to be proud of.
We found that Options House had both positive and negative recounts of customer service satisfaction reviews. We took it upon ourselves to call Options House several times and after talking to them we had to make some assumptions.
We found that 1) they have some training consistency issues across representatives, and 2) you need to be prepared to wait on hold if you are going to call right before the market closes. We were confused and dissatisfied when different representatives reported varying information that did not correspond.
Like many others, Options House is a member of Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which protects customers up to $500,000 (including $100,000 for cash balances).
In today's time when the biggest and oldest brokers can go out of business in a day we found Options House too new for our comfort level. We also had serious concerns with the varying responses we received from the customer service representatives. We recommend you select a higher ranked online stock broker to best meet your needs.
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