Good Brokers:
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1. Interactive Brokers – (Best direct access broker for “trading” higher-priced stocks. Fast executions. Not great for lower-priced since they charge .005 per share and they only route through NITE and ARCA for OTCBB and Pinksheets. None the fewer executions can be decent for lower-priced stocks if you pay an extra .004 per share for ARCA.)
2. Speedtrader – (Great broker for OTCBB stocks or higher priced because the commission is a fixed rate between $4 to $7 per order. Fast Executions, but you have to pay for Das Trader Pro software which is $120 a month however if you make about 20 trades a month the software is free. Best retail direct access broker in the world for active penny stock trading.)
3. Tradestation – (Good broker for higher price stocks and building a trading system that uses automated trading. Fast executions, $5 commissions, or per-share fee available. Not good for lower-priced stocks including OTCBB and Pinksheets.)
4. Thinkorswim ( Decent broker for high priced stocks. You can also trade options and futures. Bad for penny stocks like OTCBB and Pinksheets.)
5. Etrade – Not great for active trading because they only send orders through their route ETMM, but good to have a means of sending orders through ETMM on OTCBB and Pink sheet stocks. Okay for swing trading. Don’t pay $100 a month for their Etrade Pro software.
7. Vanguard – Good for retirement accounts if you buy Vanguard Funds. No commissions when you buy Vanguard Index Funds. Terrible broker for lower-priced stocks because you have to call them to execute the trade and they don’t allow pink sheets. Fortunately, you shouldn’t be putting retirement money into penny stock anyway. $7 per trade for the first 20 trades and then $25 per trade.
Bad / Not So Good Brokers
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1. Scottrade –> The world’s worst broker! Poor executions on high priced stocks. Terrible executions on OTCBB and Pink sheet stocks. Yes, the commission is $7 but if the slippage is $300 because they take 1.5 minutes to execute a trade, it doesn’t make sense to use this broker. On top of this their software is terrible!
2. TD Ameritrade –> The world’s second-worst broker. Poor executions on high priced stocks. Terrible executions on OTCBB and Pink sheet stocks. The advantage is their stock data is free if you have an account with just $100 in it. I use it as a backup for data only.
3. UBS – Poor executions, high commissions.
4. Schwab Poor executions high commissions.
Useful for routing to UBSS route in OTCBB and Pink sheet stocks
5. Fidelity – Bad broker, poor executions.
6. Sogotrade – Cheap commissions but poor execution.
Just2trade – Very cheap commissions by poor executions. Okay for swing trading.
7. Allytrade – I have used it personally. It used to be better when it was owned by Trade King.
8. Zecco – Cheap commissions but poor executions.
Sharebuilder (ING Direct) – only good if you want to buy a fraction of a share or a small lot. Just remember a fraction of 1 AAPL share probably won’t put your kids through college.
9. Firstrade – I haven’t used this broker but have heard they have poor commissions.
10. Robinhood
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