Hi Everyone, I am looking to open a margin account with 40,000 USD. I'm wondering who your favorite Broker is and who you would recommend for day trading? Thanks!
-Where do you live? (This will determine what firm will accept you) -What is your average trade size? (This will determine if you are better off with ticket charges or per share rates) -Are you mostly taking or adding liquidity?(This will determine if you need a DMA route or broker route to avoid fees) -How important is customer service. (Some firms suck at support) -Do you want the free platform or a broker neutral platform like Sterling (Some offer this as an options, you pay for it, some don't) You don't have to respond to these questions, but unless you provide enough information, you can't expect a response that will help you. No one broker is best for everyone.
I live in California. Will be in the 1k to 2k shares/trade range. I am mostly taking liquidity. I don't reach out to customer service too often, but would like to be able to reach someone (whether phone or live support) if needed. OX who i'm with now has great customer support. I would like a platform that has all in one. I'd rather not have to go to many different outside sources say for charting, real time scanner, etc if i don't have to. I have heard a few people recommend speedtrader. I've looked into them but cant find much info on them other than they have cheaper trades.
IB looks great on paper but has hideous customer support, essentially their CS agents know nothing about stocks, options, or the securities industry and blame everything on this ever present "algorithm" that makes what appears to be random decisions impacting your account. They also have funky margin requirements that change as determined by "the algorithm" and they'll auto-liquidate you in seconds if they think you may blow margin. The combination of the three can be very dangerous and frustrating if you're trading on margin.
OptionsXpress. They don't have quite the trading range of IB, but have what I need, and their commissions are competitive with IB for the securities I trade. They don't screw around with margin or auto-liquidate, which means I've only had to interact with their customer service team once and they seemed to know what they were doing. On the minus side, no API and the interface isn't quite as easy to use when entering option spreads. They do have a cool feature on spreads that enters multiple ascending bids/offers between a start point you set and a limit you set at X second intervals you set. I wouldn't say I'm in love with them, I'd say they're more adequate for what I need and they're much better for my blood pressure than IB.