Favorite online brokers...

[moneysavvy89]

scottrade $7 trades baby!

[Dave]

Thanks for all the info, guys.

Yeah, I agree the $7 trades are cool (Firstrade is the same, plus I think they have VERY good customer service which is important to me), HOWEVER getting better fills is also an issue when you consider commissions.

Last week I got a "bad fill" on a stop limit order that ended up costing me $30 in lost profits. Granted, that's nothing much. BUT, if that could be avoided by paying $10 or $12 per trade for a better system, it's worth it in the long run I think.

[Temujin]

I think scottrade have top-notch order execution. The charting/streaming tool you get is weaker compared to eTrade/Ameritrade, but if you already use third party that wouldn't matter.

IMO scottrade is no frills low-cost and great fills, even aftermarket.

[chuck]

It would appear,that seven dollars would be a better deal than what I am giving. But I have one big question. That question being, do you have the capabilities of building your own formulas? Also one can go and scanned premarket hours with your own formulas or the formulas that they have set up, which are not bad .

The biggest plus I think are the capabilities of scanning stocks for premarket readings versus the high low and close from the previous day. Before I forget it. They also have what they call advanced analyzer. This is really something else.

I think the capabilities that they have outweigh any two dollars. Even if you were daytrading.

[srains]

the fees are 12.99 (if you margin) or $9.99 if you dont. After 30 trades it also goes from 12.99 to 9.99. Option trading is an additional $1 per contract and after 30 trades it goes to .75 per contract. Becasue I made 30 trades in a quarter I get the level II quotes which is cool.

The linking bank accounts is good because once you get going you can transfer money easy between your etrade account and your regular bank account. I have a citibank account, after going through the process of linking and verifying my citibank account # shows up on my etrade account. So the process of transfering money between etrade and citibank is just about the same as transfering money from my citibank checking to savings account. I just go to the transfer section and transfer from: Etrade To: Citibank and I am done.

I do not know about the other services but Etrade also gives me a check book and an atm card to get money out of my account.