I am pretty much retired from my trading career. But over the years I have used:
- eTrade
- optionsxpress
- tdameritrade
- trademonster
- thinkorswim
- zecco
and possibly some others that I am forgetting.
I would say that really most people fall into two camps: Regular/infrequent traders and Frequent traders.
If you are a regular trader - you have a fairly substantial amount of money in stocks diversified in a few companies - then I suggest a brokerage that is easy to use, reputable, and with great customer service. The rock bottom pricing isn't so important but obviously don't pick one with hidden fees or really high commissions.
...As some have suggested. ETrade is a decent choice for this. I really like their website design. It makes it easy to understand what is going on and to focus on managing your money.
However, if you trade often or if you keep a fairly low amount of money in each security (under $2k) then commissions really do add up. [Think about it, $10 commission for buy+sell=$20 - If you have $1k in a stock you are giving up 2% before you start]. At that point you want to go for something low priced. I recently used trademonster and they were pretty good. I wouldn't say they are good for records keeping as much since they are a very java based platform but there commissions were low (especially for options which I was getting into and they offered some free options trades as a sign up bonus) and they had good customer service. The platform is pretty snazzy too.
Another thing to keep in mind is sign up bonuses. I haven't checked in a while but some offer things like covering bank fees for transfers, a group of free trades (10,25,100+, usually for up to 3 months), and sometimes even cash back.
Hatzlocha.
p.s. Obviously if you are getting really serious then you need to look into the real pro platforms which factor in fractions of a second in trade time and high volume commission pricing.
p.p.s. Also, be careful not to get obsessed - while stocks/investing is not the same as gambling, many people do manage to blur the lines.
