WEALTH UNIVERSITY

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TradeKing, Scottrade, and ThinkorSwim . . . .

I have accounts on Scottrade, TradeKing, and ThinkorSwim. I opened them in that order.

Scottrade has the best fundie analysis tools. If you pull up a detailed stock quote, you can download the Standard & Poor's Factual Report report which if you buy separately eg from Yahoo's "Research Reports" section would cost you $35 for each stock's report you wanted to view. Also has two other reports that make for nice summary data. Trade execution is generally fast. Commish is decent compared to other brokers and it's a flat fee -- no trading volume requirements to stay at $7, but it's definitely not the cheapest. Real time quotes and a java-applet based tool called Scottrade come standard which definitely add value to the equation. You can set up windows and drag a stock into one of them, and all the rest update. Really nice dashboard view. I really like their stock scanner (linked the public version below). There is also mobile.scottrade.com which is nice on a phone or in a small webbrowser for fast orders/quotes. The biggest downside to Scottrade IMHO are their portfolio tools. Their positions view, watch lists, etc are pretty much worthless. Trading options on Scottrade sucks: it's possible, although you can only go long options or sell covered calls. Can't eg sell puts to buy a stock with a lowered cost basis due to the premium earned. Also good luck buying a spread and getting prices good enough to provide benefit. And again, the management of them is all done manually by you. Well, I take some of that back. They do also include access to the GainsKeeper service (a limited version) which does include cost basis information without looking at order history, and is also quite awesome for tax work, but its only updated end-of-day. Their charting capabilities are pretty decent. Very easy to use for beginners with most of the major upper/lower studies available. One caveat is order routing. They use Knight Equity Services.. and a small snippet after a google: "In December 2004, Knight paid more than $79 million to settle SEC and NASD charges against the firm arising from Joseph Leighton's fraudulent and deceptive conduct." Essentially making a lot of cash off gaming the orders coming in.

ST Order Routing: http://www.marketsystems.com/msi/reports/index.html?clientid=SSIC

ST Scanner (public version):
http://research.scottrade.com/public/stocks/screener/stock_screener.asp?clear=true

TradeKing: opened an account there after seeing they really are serious about options trading and being annoyed with ST's lack of portfolio mgmt tools. Found that they keep the commish nice and low by outsourcing their software. A lot of links in their software redirect to Thompson Investor Tools, iVolatility, Market Grader, etc. Not necessarily a bad thing, as the information's not bad. I especially like the iVolatility tools: realtime options scanner and realtime options strategy scanner. Beautiful, powerful java apps. Trade executions do feel somewhat slower than ST and ToS but I haven't done enough stock trading (as opposed to options) there to know if its just a liquidity thing. The holdings view, G&L Unrealized and Realized are both quite nice. Minor gripe is that like ST's Gainskeeper, the two G&L views are only updated at midnight each day rather than realtime. TK doesn't provide as nice research reports as ST, and also a biggie to me is that they don't provide realtime stock quotes unless you either have an account worth > $25K or pay them extra each month. Ironic given they have realtime options tools, but its probably another way they keep commish down. Get what you pay for kinda thing. Another downside is that their website is the only platform. No pared down website for quick trades or using it on your phone. Another minor gripe is that ACH setup has to be done via mail or FAX. Can't set it up online, so unless you're going to wire money, don't expect to be able to trade with your account for about a week from the date you sign up. Another minor upside is in their education section, you can read the book "Options Strategy Playbook" which you can buy at bookstores. Written by TK's CEO if I recall correctly. Its good.

Speaking of that book, I read somewhere (after I had opened my account) that the physical book has a coupon for a free $50 if you open a TK account. Unverified, though. It was a comment on amazon.com.

TradeKing also uses Knight for order routing: http://www.tta.thomson.com/reports/1-6/krsg/

I recently opened my ThinkorSwim account. One of my friends trades futures for a company in Chicago and stands behind ToS for the more technical trader. They really do have lightning fast execution, and you're a lot more likely to get a better deal on an option spread since they take spreads to open outcry. (They also provide the 'Spread Book' showing what orders are currently out there by customers, so you can throw behind someone else's trade too to help improve the price for everyone by giving the floor trader extra volume to sweeten the trade. It's neat to be able to see what plays others are making on stocks.) The trading platform really is damned advanced. It doesn't have much as far as fundamentals: just the details like EPS, PE and those. Not things like insider trading information, company summary, etc. The charting tool is PHENOMINAL. Holy crap. Hundreds of studies, and you can even view the source code and modify/create your own. Simply incredible, plenty of drawing tools, etc. You can save layouts, study sets, etc. Another great tool is the trading window and the analyzer. In trading window, for options, it has a theoretical price tool, where you can look at a specific option and change price from current, volatility from current and date from current, and using the greeks it will compute the mid price based. Very useful for determining trading limits and targets for the options based on the underlying price action. The analyze tool you can put in simulated trades and back-test them and also view really great P+L charts.

Another upside is that they have TONS of trading platforms. The primary program being thinkDesktop -- a fullblown app. They also have several web-based versions of varying complexities and several mobile device applications. If you have internet access by some means, chances are you can trade on ToS with it. They also include free streaming CNBC access, lol. Order routing is much nicer than the other two.

https://www.thinkorswim.com/tos/client/complianceWorld/orderRoutingReports/sept2008.jsp;jsessionid=77B9B73C45EE650CA7A7144A31DBCE42.v21

Only real downside with ToS aside from lacking the research reports is the commish when it comes to penny stocks. For regular stocks, it's not bad, you can get up to 5,000 shares for 9.95, or as low as $5 if you're trading under 330 shares of something. (.015 cents per share $5 minimum , or 9.95 flat to 5K shares). More than 5K shares, you'll probably want to do multiple orders. Also, OTCBB purchase comm is $20-$50, 20 for up to 20K shares, 30 for up to 50K, or 50 for unlimited. Options are either 2.95 per contract or 9.95 + 1.5 per contract.

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With the above, my current plan is to use ToS for almost all of my standard stock and smaller contract count (or advanced spread) options plays. For something where I intend to get a lot of contracts for something and it isn't a spread, I'll use TradeKing (4.95 + .65 a contract means 100 contracts cost 69.95 in commission versus 9.95 + 1.5 = 159.95 for 100 contracts at ToS.) OTCBB trades I'd also probably do at TK or ST. But I'd do practically all of my technical analysis and charting at ToS, and pull reports from Scottrade.

Hope this post helps someone.