tradeMONSTER

Like TradeKing, tradeMONSTER offers investors a fantastic deal on commissions. Stock trades are decently priced at $7.50 (unlimited shares), but options are absolutely dirt cheap at 50 cents a contract contract (with a minimum charge of $12.50). Multi-leg orders carry a minimum charge of $7.50 per leg.

To my knowledge, no firm can match tradeMONSTER’s commission rates, at least for the average trader/investor pushing moderate volumes. Interactive Brokers will charge 50 cents a contract for options with a premium of 5 cents or higher, but only if you trade over 10,000 contracts per month and use the company’s smart-routing technologies.

As always, keep in mind that if you are a heavy trader, you may be able to negotiate a better deal with any broker.

tradeMONSTER was founded by options-industry mavens Jon and Pete Najarian, so it is very well-geared for options traders. There is a very powerful spread-building application called SpreadMaker, and other goodies like paper-trading tool, fundamental analysis reports, and a ton of educational content.

The only major downside I see with tradeMONSTER is that its trading platform only runs through a browser. This may not be an issue for you, but it is for me because I tend to have bad luck with web browsers. IE was a disaster for me and FireFox isn’t stable enough on my PC for mission-critical use. I prefer to use software programs that eliminates the need to deal with buggy browser – again, the average person doesn’t care. (should I be trading with a Mac?)

Also, for those who trade on the go, tradeMONSTER doesn’t yet have a mobile trading application.

tradeMONSTER is a pretty young company and they’re definitely one to watch. As they build out their online investing platform’s features, they will probably start to rank in the popular surveys done by Smart Money and Barron’s. I’ve personally heard positive anecdotes about their customer service – let’s hope they keep up the good work as they grow bigger.