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From the category archives:

brokers

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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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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How to Compare Commissions Between Brokers

A reader we’ll call Moose (name changed to protect the guilty) just emailed me the following question:
Michael, how should I compare commissions between my current broker (OptionsXpress) and TradeKing?
Sounds like Mr. Moose is thinking about switching! First things first…
Really consider why you are switching. If you are happy with your current broker – particularly when [...]

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Is Zecco Unethical?

BrokerSense reader Tony posted the following comment in response to my page on Zecco:
While everything you said about Zecco is true, I am quite miffed at them for their “bait and switch” tactic that lured a lot of small investors to them before they “changed their model.” Zecco started out with unlimited no-commission trades. Too [...]

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Thinkorswim on a Mac

I am one happy camper – I just bought my first Apple (AAPL) Mac!
My new baby, which will be named something hot like Carmen or Estella, is a lightly-used early-2008 Macbook. It’s also a beast!
My last notebook was a Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) laptop, and it was a dog. Nothing against HP – in fact, I give [...]

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Schwab Says Financial Advisors Want to go Indie

Charles Schwab (SCHW), which is big on surveys, just released the results of a brand new one:

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