Throughout history, the prices of financial assets like stocks, bonds, commodities, and currencies have gone up and down in waves. Traders and buyers who want to make their money grow can take advantage of these market changes. Finding an online trader that fits your attitude and financial goals is an important step in making the most of the financial markets.
All big online companies now let you trade stocks and ETFs for free, and many also let you trade other types of assets for free. The best trading systems have low costs, are easy to understand, and don’t use a lot of game-like features that encourage overtrading.
They also offer a lot of basic and technical study, a wide range of financial choices, cutting-edge trade tools, excellent customer service, strong mobile capabilities, and a lot of easy-to-find training materials, all on powerful PC and mobile platforms.
Best Broker for ETFs: Fidelity Investments
Why We Went With It
Fidelity is still our top pick for the best broker overall and the best broker for low costs. This has been the case for many years. For the first time, the company also came out on top in our category for Best Broker for ETFs, beating out Charles Schwab. Fidelity offers a full-service experience to both business and individual clients at a low price. It does this by giving complex tools to clients through a simple process.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- They have promised to get rid of common account fees
- Portfolio research and account tools that are very good
- Excellent order delivery
- Active Trader Pro has a very strong base.
- Indexing right away
- There are fractional shares of over 7,000 U.S. stocks and ETFs that are traded.
Cons
- Fees for trades with a broker are higher.
- Some indexes have a minimum amount for buying
- Non-U.S. people can’t get in.
- To use all tools, you may need to use more than one app.
Overview
Fidelity is top pick overall, as well as for Best Low-Cost Broker and Best Broker for ETFs. This is because it keeps improving its products, has great customer service, offers the best value, and has a lot of study and learning tools. Fidelity’s long and interesting past began in 1946 when it was founded. As of December 2022, the Boston-based company had $3.6 trillion in assets that it could use as it pleased. This made it one of the top trading firms in terms of assets under control.
Fidelity is always looking for ways to improve its goods and services. In 2022, it made headlines by launching a Digital Assets Account (DAA), which will allow plan owners to give their members access to Bitcoin as an investment choice in their plan’s core range. A Fidelity Crypto Industry and Digital Payments ETF (FDIG) and a Fidelity Metaverse ETF (FMET) were also released by the company. Improvements were also made to the institutional side of the business. For example, the company made it easier for more people to use tools like Fidelity Bond Beacon that are unique to the company.
Fidelity has added digital direct tracking accounts called Fidelity Managed FidFolios to its list of services for customers who want help on a personal level. The FidFolios use partial shares to look like indexes, but they own the real company instead of an ETF, which gives them more flexibility. Fidelity also improved its mobile experience with a remade app dashboard that includes live quotes on the home screen and more options for customizing the news feed.
This year, Fidelity beat out Charles Schwab as our best broker for exchange-traded funds (ETFs). For years, they were very close. Like Schwab, Fidelity has a lot of teaching information about ETFs, strong tools for screening ETFs, and a large number of ETFs to choose from. But it was Fidelity’s ability to trade partial shares in ETFs that helped it get there.
Fidelity has been a star in the industry when it comes to dropping fees, and it has a great image as a trader with a huge customer service network to back up its low-cost, high-value offering. If an investor wants a low-cost online broker that gives good value, it will be hard to find a better broker than Fidelity.
TD Ameritrade: Best Broker for Beginners and Best Broker for Mobile
Why We Went With It
TD Ameritrade is still the Best Broker for Beginners and the Best Broker for Mobile. This is because it has an easy-to-use website, a wide range of training tools, and excellent mobile options analytics, research tools, and trading tools.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Lots of products to choose from
- Superb teaching information
- Trading technology and options statistics that are top-notch on all platforms
- Very good trade site for paper
- Helpful customer service
Cons
- Some account fees are higher than others.
- offers no partial shares
- Automatic cash sweep must be turned on.
- Only OTC trusts, ETFs, joint funds, and Bitcoin futures can be used to trade cryptocurrencies.
Overview
We picked TD Ameritrade as the winner of our best broker for newbies and best broker for mobile categories again because it works hard to give clients easy access to some of the best training material, mobile trading tools, and research tools in the business.
TD Ameritrade has been around since 1975 and was bought by Charles Schwab in 2019. It is one of the best full-service online brokers. As usual, the company keeps adding new features to its products, such as changes to its already amazing tracking features and a portfolio digest feature that was released in 2022.
The highly praised thinkorswim® trading tool from TD Ameritrade is both strong and easy to use. Access to powerful backtesting tools makes it easier to come up with your own trading strategies, and the platform’s paper trading feature lets you practice putting these strategies into action. TD Ameritrade is as constant as it gets when it comes to how the mobile, PC, and web apps work, how easy they are to use, and how they run.
However, Interactive Brokers has the most advanced mobile platform.In spite of this, TD Ameritrade’s mobile plan is simply the best overall. This overall strength comes from the fact that it has the widest range of asset classes, the best customer service, premium research, powerful screening features, calculators with backtesting options, and tools to help you figure out your overall financial situation. All of this is available with no minimum balance requirements and low, clear pricing.
Interactive Brokers is the best broker for experienced traders and for trading internationally.
Why We Went With It
Interactive Brokers (IBKR) is still our top broker for both skilled day traders and international traders. This is because it has a wide range of global assets and advanced analysis tools and calculators. Its closest competitor is still a long way behind it in these two categories.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Superior order execution
- Orders that cover every possible case
- Unmatched range of foreign and local assets that can be invested in
- Low-interest rates on the margin
- Trader Workstation (TWS) is very strong and can be changed in many ways.
Cons
- IBKR Lite customers can’t use IBKR’s SmartRouting.
- It can be hard to learn TWS.
- No automatic trading or backtesting of special trade programs
- The small fees charged by Interactive Brokers are based on tiers, which can be a bit confusing.
Overview
Interactive Brokers is our top choice for both experienced and foreign traders because no other broker offers such a wide range of global assets that can be invested in, as well as such advanced trading technology and in-depth research tools. IBKR is a stable, well-capitalized broker that is also trading on the stock market. It has 2.01 million client accounts and daily trade values of $1.92 million.
Thomas Peterffy, who is now the chairman of the company, started it in 1978 under the name T.P. & Co. The company was one of the first to use computers in dealing, but it wasn’t until 1993 that it became a broker-dealer in the United States. It is now one of the most well-rounded dealers in the business. IBKR is the best foreign trader by a long shot. It has access to 150 markets, lets you trade stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, funds, cryptocurrencies, and more in over 200 countries, and has funding ways in 26 currencies.
The company is always coming up with new ideas to stay ahead of the competition. The IBKR GlobalTrader mobile app and the ability to trade partial shares for European stocks and ETFs are some of the more important changes that have been made recently.
International traders can use PC, web, and mobile forms, like IBKR Mobile and the IBKR GlobalTrader app, to access financial markets and all assets. TWS is a well-designed platform that combines basic analysis, social opinion, core research, and financial tools in a way that makes it easier for users to take advantage of price gaps than any other platform we looked at.
Tastytrade (formerly tastyworks) is the best options broker
Why We Went With It
We picked tastytrade as the best options trading site because it tailors its tools and material to the needs of its options-focused customers. Also, tastytrade has put caps on the prices of its options, making it the lowest-cost exchange for users who buy and sell options often and in large quantities.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Structure for options commissions with a cap
- Tools that are highly valued for studying and keeping track of options trades
- Excellent information and text about specific choices
- Recent changes to the screen have made dealing even better.
- Follow Feed lets users keep up with the deals of tastytrade’s TV stars.
Cons
- There aren’t many ways to spend.
- Few tools for saving and planning for retirement
- Poor analysis of a portfolio
- There’s nothing new or important to say.
Overview
The name of tastyworks was officially changed to tastytrade on February 22, 2023.
Tastytrade is still the best broker for options because it is easy to use and has the best tools and materials for options in the business. In 2017, the same people who made the very popular thinkorswim® program for TD Ameritrade also made tastytrade.
Tastytrade has very low fees for trading options, with features like commission caps for big lot sizes and no costs when finishing accounts that make it stand out. Users of tastytrade are lucky that these low fees do not come with a platform that has bad options data, a bad platform process, or trades that take a long time to complete. In fact, the tastytrade platform combines all of these things in a way that makes it one of the best of all the companies we looked at.
Tastytrade has responded to customer requests for social trading by letting users watch individual traders in real time and see and copy the methods that other traders are using. Even though tastytrade still has great customer service, capped fees on options trades, and great teaching and trading content related to options, our new method penalizes them for not having key research tools and having limited mobile charts options.
A company representative did tell us that the company is working on these problems, but any fixes would come too late to keep tastytrade from taking the titles of Best Broker for Advanced Options Traders and Best Broker for Mobile Options Traders from Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrade, respectively.
Final Verdict
As the focus of the Federal Reserve has shifted from pushing growth in a world after COVID to fighting the terrible effects of high inflation, 2022 taught a new generation of traders that markets can go through periods of high instability. All online brokers make money from the trading activity of their clients, either directly or indirectly. The best brokerage platforms have strong customer support, strong research and analysis tools, a lot of educational content, a wide range of available assets, and a lot of different account types. They also have a clear fee structure and don’t try to make the experience too much like a game.
Based on our thorough review of the best online brokers, we found that Fidelity is not only the best when it comes to trading in ETFs and keeping costs low, but it is also the best firm overall. Both new and experienced users will find TD Ameritrade’s trading tool, wide range of resources, and best-in-class mobile experience to be both smart and easy to use. The Tastytrade website is also easy enough for beginners to use, and the training and market information is hard to beat, but only if you want to focus on options trading. When you’re ready to trade on the most advanced platform with access to the most foreign markets by far, Interactive Brokers gives you the best experience you can get.
