Blog Post On: 3/25/2009

Once a year Barron's publishes a Discount Broker Rating matrix.

If you are just starting out with investing or looking for a new broker this list below can be very helpful.

Barron's - Broker Ratings

Kiplinger - Broker Ratings

We have evaluated Fidelity, Scottrade, and TradeKing. Fidelity has by far the best economic research out of any of the online brokers.

Our Take:

Fidelity: The best free economic research. Mobile device trading. Trades at $19.95. In order to get the lowest $8.00 rate you must have $25k in the account and place 120+ trades a year.
Interactive Brokers: The lowest commision anywhere, super fast trade executions, trade multiple products, mobile device trading is bare bones but gets the job done.
Scottrade: Good research, good execution and $7.00 trades. That about sums it up.
TradeKing: Free research by MarketGrader.com, online options training course, community forums. $4.95 trades for ETFs, Stocks and Options. We like that!

There are many other brokers with interesting offers. Zecco offers free trades and low fees but they seem to appear on the bottom of most of the recommended brokers. This could be due to the fact that this is such a new company.