List Of Brokerages I Use Daily
I have several brokerage accounts. However, Interactive Brokers (IB) is hands down my GOTO brokerage. On average a trade cost me less than .75 cents. For someone that makes 100’s of trades a year, I save nearly $4000-6000 a year on trading fees compared to the traditional brokerage firms like Scottrade, TD Ameritrade, and E-Trade. I highly recommend IB. They are a one stop shop if you want to trade Futures, Bonds, Oil, Equities, Forex, and Indexes. They offer low margin rates. Lastly, and best of all, they pay 1.44 1.68% interest (as of Sept 28, 2018)on unused funds that is sitting in your account.
I still use TD Ameritrade because they offer Think-Or-Swim (TOS) trading platform. I use this software for specific purposes. So, I opened an account with them years ago just so I could use this software. It’s worth funding an account just for this software. Recently my Scottrade account has been sucked into TD Ameritrade as Scottrade and TD Ameritrade merged.
WHY USE TWO BROKERAGES?
Several reasons why. What if you randomly lost access to one brokerage account? What if you wanted to go short and long the same stock? What if you wanted to DRIP your dividends in one account? Having multiple brokerages also provides FDIC asset protection. If you’re serious about trading and protecting your assets, it may be worth having multiple accounts. It does not cost you anything, but it could certainly save you in some cases.