I will dedicate this post to my recent experience with TD Ameritrade. I must admit TD Ameritrade is an excellent brokerage firm, no doubt about that. However it comes with its own set of problems. Last week I was trying to purchase a stocks of a company (BIEL). I had been following them for a while and I knew it was time for BIEL to get buying signals and hence a great opportunity to make money.
I logged on to my TD Ameritrade account to place a LIMIT order of few thousand shares of BIEL, but to my surprise I was not allowed to do so. I tried several times only to run into problems every time. Being frustrated I called the customer service, which was very prompt to respond (< 1 min hold time). I was told that BIEL was put on hold by TD Ameritrade. Arghh!! I lost an opportunity to up my investments by about 15% in a matter of two days!
Did some research and opened an account with Zecco & OptionsHouse. They were right when they said maintain accounts with multiple brokerage firms. You might run into problems with any broker so you got to have a choice! Again by no means I am saying TD Ameritrade is bad! They are probably best among the lot, but you got to have options in the event that I ran into. I would recommend the readers to open accounts with one or more from following list:
1. OptionsHouse is currently running special ads for 100 Free Trades if you open your account before April 30th. On top of that, they are the cheapest as far as the commission rates go (2.95$ per trade).
Get 100 Free Trades with OptionsHouse.com
Read reviews at OptionsHouse Reviews
2. TradeKing is the top Rated Broker by SmartMoney – 4 years running (2006-2009). It also got 4-Star Rated Broker by Barron’s – 12th Annual Survey of Best Browser-Based Online Brokers. All that is available for low flat fees – $4.95 per trade plus $.65 per options contract
Open an account with Trading King – Tradeking
Read reviews at TradeKing Reviews
3. Zecco:Best thing about Zecco is their 10 free trades every month if you make 25 trades in a month. Hence your effective rate actually becomes a lot lower than what they advertise which is 4.5$/trade. Their effective rate comes down to 2.70$ / trade, now who can beat that? See details below:
Read reviews at Zecco Reviews
