I like IB. It has fast execution and very good interests rate and great margin rate. However, if you trade penny stock, the commission is 0.5%, which is high. Its CS is the worst I have ever experienced.
I am using Ameritrade and Interactive Brokers. Interactive gives you access to certain foreign markets.
The platform is automated and Interactive is not setup to deal with you personally. Email inquiries take days to get a response and phone inquiries take a long time to get a live person.
But the access to Canadian markets is important to me and I have not found a comparable alternative for American investors. I transfer funds from Ameritrade electronically and it takes 2-4 days to complete.
The fees have gone thru the roof since I started. The initial fees were really cheap so I guess there's no free lunch. They charge a per share charge that has increased my average fees well above Ameritrade. However the benefit of Interactive is the ability to bid in Canadian dollars and know that your bid is only costing you the fee and not an invisible and probably much larger amount for the exchange rate that Ameritrade's canadian broker charges.
I would recommend Interactive as long as you know that you aren't going to get personal service from them. I haven't tried the Australian or UK markets yet but Australia looks tempting because of all their resource stocks.
kipp440: I like IB for the futures trading and Canadian stocks in Canadian dollars .... I'm doing an increasing amount of futures trading and have done very well with that. But as BW pointed out, commissions have gone up substantially for low priced stocks. You can get the fee schedule on their website.
Trading the NatGas futures has been fun and easy profits so far .... I've been at it for a year now. Like riding a rocking horse. Regular and predictable up and down movements.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
