The best high-cost, full-service brokerage
PROS:
TD Ameritrade / ThinkOrSwim has one of the best customer service and "whole customer experience" of all brokerages, period. The website is beautifully laid out, smart, intuitive, informative, and does everything you could need and more. I have an account with them and keep $0 in it, just to use their website services. They give you free, easy access to research reports of all the major analysts (Credit Suisse, S&P, Ford Equity, Vickers, TheStreet, Jaywalk, etc.). That is one of the best features. They also give you access to everything else you would expect from a full-service brokerage: 24/7 live trading and customer support personnel, thousands of brick-and-mortar locations nationwide, paperless account setup, easy money transfers, charting, streaming trading control station, etc.
Another major pro is that TD Ameritrade / ThinkOrSwim gets some of the best fills on penny/pink/OTC/BB stocks. They have access to great routes, even if they're not directly selectable, and their "intelligent" route often gives you surprising liquidity and improved fills. I used TD Ameritrade, SogoTrade, and Zecco for trading OTCs, and TD Ameritrade was always as-good or better than both of the others. The only annoying part of their actual order-routing capabilities is that they refuse to open up orders until 8am, just like TradeStation. This makes it annoying to not get pre-pre-market fills like you can get with a direct-access brokerage… but I don't think a lot of people will use this pre-8am feature anyway, so not a big point in my opinion. Aside from that, you will also have to deal with website-based order entry, which means no split-second, direct access trading. You will have to wait for the website to refresh every time before you can make your order changes. However, like I said, the website is very smart, so it loads the order-entry window before everything else, so even on a crappy internet connection, I've been able to fire off emergency orders even when the website wouldn't fully load. Their website is truly amazing. All brokerages should learn from them.
CONS:
Their commissions. I feel like these flat-rate brokerages are going to fade into the distant memories of the past eventually, but they're still trying to hang on to their antiquated business models. Schwab, ETrade, TD Ameritrade / ThinkOrSwim, ShareBuilder - they're all way too expensive. Talk to them. Negotiate their commissions. I was able to get 25% off for just asking. Try to get them to to price-match other competitors. You'll be surprised what kind of discount you can get by simply requesting it (or giving an ultimatum- "Pricematch this or I don't open the account"… that's a classic line).
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This review is the subjective opinion of an Investimonials.com member and not of Investimonials LLC.
