What made me open an account with Scottrade

Scottrade is one of the leading online brokerage firms that put forward a complete line of investment products, online trading services and market research tools to help traders and investors have power over of their financial potential.

With Scottrade, I’ve experienced great convenience, support and affordability.

I’ve been into investing for a long time now, and all this time, I’ve evaluated many online brokers who are in the field at present. Different brokers have different palette of features and services to put forward to their clients but what appeals to me is the perfect design that Scottrade offers. Being an account holder with this privileged broker, I’ve so far received many benefits and advantages, a few of which I’m going to share with you, later in this review.

Exceptional Online Stock Broker with Local Branch Offices

Scottrade’s Key Features & Customer Feedback

Let’s take a look at some key factors that makes this firm a recommended one!

• They charge what is worth paying for (Affordable Pricing)

A brokerage fee is worth paying if you’re earning from the trades. Scottrade ensures easy trade session that provide ample opportunities to the traders and investors. With a mere balance of $500, you can start using the exclusive Scottrade broker service. Give it a try, they don’t charge a penny for maintenance and closing down the account. Yet, to take a look at their pricing scheme, a detailed description is given below-

• Online Stock and Option Trades- At Scottrade, for those who trade online, without broker support or telecalling system, the base commission fee is $7 a trade, which is applicable to stocks. For trading in Options, an extra $1.25 per contract is charged. Using tele-calling service, you’ll have to pay $17 while broker assisted calls will cost $27. This might sound huge, but it’s a competitive price for a trade that includes an investment advice from an expert.

• Mutual Fund Trades- for mutual fund investors, Scottrade has a range of 1150 funds to choose from. These are absolutely ‘No-Load-No-Transaction-Fee funds (also known as NTF funds). You do not have to pay on purchase, sell or exchange of these mutual funds online. However, no load mutual funds with no-free transaction fee are free to buy, but selling and exchanging these funds can be done at $17 per trade. However, if you make your mind up to using the exclusive broker service to place mutual fund orders, you’ll pay up an extra $20!

They are Established, Renowned and Awarded

Scottrade has been in business since 1980, much longer than other challenger brokerage companies. They have established a dense network of 422 local offices across the nation and have gained huge popularity in the niche. With the series of awards they have bagged in these years, Scottrade has become the No.1 choice among traders and investors at present.

Scottrade’s cap has been adorned by Fortune by listing it in- “Top 100 Best Companies to Work For”( number 60 in 2009 and number 58 in 2008)

Then, for utmost customer satisfaction, they’ve been honored by J.D. Power and Associates’ Online Investor Satisfaction Survey: Rank 1 from 2001 till 2008.

Further, SmartMoney Broker Survey for 2009 conferred 4 stars rating for investment products, trading tools and customer service.

A Range of Chosen Features to Make Clients at Ease

As I said earlier, their features, services and tools is what makes me one of the account holders at Scottrade.

Trade Execution Quality

Scottrade ensures a safe, quick and user-friendly environment for trading. In case the market center is under-performing, Scottrade will route orders in those securities to a healthier performing market center. With their prompt and competent execution process, they are able to execute orders at or within the National Best Bid or Offer. Their website speed and availability is measured by Gomez Business Process benchmarks.

Advanced Trading Platform

With Scottrade Elite, downloadable with minimum account balance of $25,000, you can customize the interface and trade more conveniently.

Streaming Quotes

Scottrade provides live and real-time quotes, charts and news so that you can monitor your portfolio instantaneously.

Stock Market Research

They present edifying screeners for stocks, mutual funds and ETFs. Along with this, they have promising and advanced screening tools and tickers that monitor stocks, funds and ETFs, and that reveal stock dividend history with price, industry and short interest details.

Products and Services

With equities, funds, options and ETFs, as well as fixed income products, CDs and bonds in their attaché, Scottrade props up for the naïve investors and amateur traders with Coverdell education savings account and no fee retirement account.

Scottrade might not be the cheapest option around the corner, but is surely the one that lays plenty options and opportunities for amateurs and naïve investors.  I have personally seen many TradeKing and Zecco traders completely shifting their portfolio to Scottrade.

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