Barron’s Online Broker Rankings

NOTE: This data is current as of March 2009.

I was pretty happy to see that my broker of choice, thinkorswim, made it to the top of the Barron’s ranking. It’s been nearly a year since Barron’s released these rankings, and ever since thinkorswim was acquired by TD Ameritrade (AMTD), I’ve been a little bit worried about a decline in quality at thinkorswim.

Thankfully, nothing could be further from the truth. The thinkorswim people still pick up the phone there within a couple of rings, and always quickly solve my problems. Executions are still fast, and the thinkDesktop software is still incredibly stable on my Mac.

Barron’s does a pretty comprehensive job when it puts together its rankings. It measures trade experience, trading technology, usability, range of offerings, research amenities, portfolio analysis and reporting, customer services and access, and costs to put together a final rankings.

I also commend them for including smaller, emerging brokerage houses like tradeMONSTER and TradeKing in their listings – something its competitors fail to do.

So without further adieu, here are the top 25 online brokers as ranked by Barron’s:

1.  thinkorswim
2.  MB Trading
3.  TradeStation Securities
4.  Interactive Brokers
5.  Fidelity Investments
6.  optionsXpress
7.  TradeKing
8.  OptionsHouse
9.  ChoiceTrade
10. E*Trade Securities
11. TD Ameritrade
12. Muriel Siebert
13. Charles Schwab
14. tradeMONSTER
15. Lightspeed Trading
16. Scottrade
17. AB Watley
18. Zecco
19. SogoTrade
20. Just2Trade.com
21. Firstrade Securities
22. StockCross
23. WellsTrade
24. Bank of America Inv. Svcs.
25. Sharebuilder