Hey,hey...Etrade aint the cheapest, IB has hot commish 1000% cheaper. Do you prefer he's gonna give his $$ to the broker or to us? DrAtomic Don't waste dosh on high commissions... they'll eat into you profits, trade small size.
DrAtomic - Bitstream is right - many of the trading B/D's offer commish less than .01/share. This is not important to me since I always trade at least 1000 shares, usually at mkt, and I get unbelievably good fills, many times better than the spread bid/ask on active stocks. I have gotten so used to Etrades platform that I really would not change to save 3-4$ on a trade when I can trade up to 5000 shares for $9.99. So... I am happy with .01 commish rate. Good luck
Scottrade would be a bad idea. The good thing about having Scottrade as your first broker is that you are going to like most other brokers when you switch out of Scottrade. Etrade is a less bad idea. However, if you open an account E-trade, you actually still have to pay at least $9.99/per trade. If you do end up trading 100 times with the first 30 days, you'll pay about $1000 in commission before your first month is over. For a new account, E-trade will reimburse your first 30 days' commissions (up to 100 trades) about 2 months later. Moreover, if you don't stay with them for at least 6 months, they will charge those commissions back to you. Besides, E-trade has an account transfer out fee to make the parting even bitter. Considering that you at least worked on trading concepts for a year or so, you might want to go with RML trading. I think they currently have $2.95 per trade for both direct and non-direct orders for a specific deal with new accounts. You can also choose per share pricing if you like.
IB is the cheapest of them all for 100 lot. Just $1 a side. And you are not playing against the house when trade FX.
IF you have 10k so you are not going to daytrade (at least youtrade futures or forex ) so I recommend to you some cheap in data and per share comission. I think IB or MBT are fine for some kind of guy like you. Ameritrade is too expensive for someone with that amount and scottrade is good if your chinese...
Good luck to Dr. Atomic with whichever broker you decide on.... I like it when people take the profits and make $$$$ in the markets.