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Michael Comeau

Great news! Barron’s just released its always-excellent and comprehensive annual survey of online brokers.Among its overall findings:

  • “Commissions on stock transactions dropped at most big firms like Charles Schwab, E*Trade and Fidelity.”
  • “New products are proliferating. Investors can now work out complicated options straddles, place orders virtually instantaneously and put their money to work in Singapore or Germany while hedging their bets in dollars or euros or exchange-traded funds.”
  • “A number of online brokers improved their rankings over Barron’s 2009 survey by updating their Websites and making key features more accessible.”

Enough of that stuff, on to the rankings:

Barron’s rated the following brokers as the best for long-term investing:

  1. Fidelity
  2. Charles Schwab
  3. OptionsXpress
  4. TD*Ameritrade
  5. E*Trade
  6. Muriel Siebert

And for frequent traders, Barron’s put the following guys on top:

  1. MB Trading
  2. Lightspeed Trading
  3. Interactive Brokers
  4. ChoiceTrade
  5. Tradestation
  6. Thinkorswim

Read the full Barron’s article, which includes additional rankings for options and international trading here.

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I just wanted to highlight a new page I wrote up on Interactive Brokers. No, I don’t waste your time by listing every commission charge on every little thing – I just stick with what you actually need to know!

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Best Broker for Deep in the Money Calls

I wrote quite a bit about Lenny Dykstra on LongShortTrader.com, and to this day, I receive questions about Lenny’s deep-in-the-money call option trading strategy.
In fact, Just last week someone asked me to suggest an online broker for trading deep-in-the-money call options.
First of all, let’s define the term.

Call options with exercise prices below the current stock [...]

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New Pages!

Hi folks, I just added a couple of new pages to the site. I’ve been working on some other writing projects lately, but I’m starting to make more time for this site.
You can now read about:
RBC Direct Investing
Barron’s Online Broker Rankings
Scarsdale

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E*Trade Joins Commission-Cutting Party

Yes folks, commission rates are still falling – at a rate even I’m surprised at. Following Fidelity’s move last week, E*Trade (ETFC) announced that it was ’simplifying’ its commission rate schedule.

E*Trade is trashing its $12.99 pre-trade commission tier as well as its account activity fees – a nice bonus for those of us who don’t [...]

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Fidelity Lowers Trading Commissions

Yes, the online broker pricing war is still on. Fidelity Investments announced today that it is cutting its commissions for online stock trades from $8-$19.95 per trade to a flat $7.95 fee. This news comes just a month after Charles Schwab (SCHW) announced it would be cutting its own stock-trade price down to $8.95 a [...]

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Appearance on Frank Curzio’s Podcast

Hi all, just wanted to let you know that I appeared on Frank Curzio’s podcast yesterday. Frank was a very good friend of mine at TheStreet.com (TSCM) and is the best in the business when it comes to penny stocks. Frank’s now with Stansberry and Associates, where he’s about to launch what might be the [...]

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Which Thinkorswim Rate Plan is Best?

Let’s talk Thinkorswim, the love of my trading life.

Yes, I love Thinkorswim, but they have way too many commission rate plans. There’s a standard rate plan, and two others called EX/RATES #1 and EX/RATES #2.
Here’s the breakdown of how the standard plan for stock and options trades works:
For stocks, it’s 1.5 cents per share with [...]

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