SmartMoney conducts a broker survey every year and now you see why I highly recommend Etrade Financial and TradeKing. Etrade is ranked first for the third year in a roll and TradeKing is ranked fourth but have the cheapest trading commission in the top ten at $4.95 a trade. In fact, the top three, Etrade, Fidelity and Charles Schwab are $9.99, $10.95 and $12.95 respectively so it’s not even close.
I personally use Etrade right now but have been contemplating on switching to TradeKing because of the lower commissions. According to SmartMoney, TradeKing has:
- Mutual Funds and Investment Products: 3 stars
- Banking Services: 2 stars (they actually don’t have a banking unit like Etrade)
- Trading Tools: 5 stars
- Research: 3 stars
- Customer Service: 5 stars
Not too bad. I must admit that I love the fact that Etrade has a high yield savings account tied to the brokerage firm and act as a super high yield sweep account for me. But $4.95 of TradeKing is sure tempting.
It’s nice to see that a major magazine like SmartMoney essentially telling me that whether I stay with Etrade or go with TradeKing, I will be in good hands though. The debate continues…
- – Official Site
- Etrade Financial – Official Site
Additional Reading:
- Etrade Financial Review
- TradeKing – Review from MoneyNing.com
- SmartMoney Top Broker Survey Full Rankings – Official Site
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I opened up a TradeKing IRA recently (admittedly just because I wanted to check it out to see if I’d feel good recommending it for the aff program).
Answer: It’s awesome. Granted, all I do with it is buy Vanguard ETFs. But I really like it so far. (And all told, because of the small commissions, and the ETFs’ lower expense ratios, it costs less than using the regular open-ended Vanguard index funds.) 🙂
I’ve been trading with TradeKing for about a year and a half now, and have been extremely happy with it. About this only thing I don’t like about it is because of an obnoxious login process, you can’t link it up with financial sites like Mint or Cake, which is something you can do with just about any other online brokerage in the country.
I currently use Etrade and I wanted to open up a Tradeking account for the lower commission. Which, there is a little fine print regarding that lower commission, beware if you want to buy anything under $1. Also I second the login being obnoxious. Lastly if you want to move money in or out of the account I wouldn’t recommend using anything other than a Wiretransfer, unless you don’t mind going long periods of time without access to your cash (but that is the same with most banks I guess).