has only been around since December 2005, and they’ve wasted no time carving out a reputation as a serious power player in the discount broker niche. They have recently been setting the pace for innovation in the online broker space, and early last year they rolled out their mobile trading apps for Blackberry and iPhone. They have also recently expanded their already formidable free education resources, including video tutorials, live webinars, and options playbook for all levels of traders.
What they offer: Ultra-low commissions, top rated customer service (Smart Money, The Wall Street Journal magazine ranked them #1 as of June last year). TradeKing is known for it’s slick trading platform, great research tools, mobile trading access, and arguably the best options trading tools around. On March 16, 2011, they implemented a new pricing structure that benefits high volume options traders and spread traders (see fees & commissions below for details of the price improvement).
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The Verdict: TradeKing is an impressive & innovative trading platform, and it just keeps on getting better. They are continually adding useful features, and listening to the needs of the market. This is definitely one of the better brokerage firms out there. Highly recommended.
Where to join: (use this link to get up to $150 in transfer fees reimbursed)
In Depth TradeKing Review
Setting Up An Account:
Setting up an account online at TradeKing is seamless. The entire sign up process is just 3 screens long and very straightforward.
(use this link to claim up to $150 in transfer fees)
Fees/Commissions:
- Stocks: $4.95 per trade (flat fee).
- Options (1-8 contracts): $4.95 + $0.65 per contract.
- Options (9+ contracts): $8.95 + $0.15 per contract.
- Options Example — For example, a single option trade of 25 contracts used to cost $21.20 under the old pricing schedule. That same trade now only costs $12.70, a 40% savings.
- Options Example 2 — For spread traders or multi-leg traders, TradeKing now has only one base charge per trade. A 10-contract condor, for example, used to cost $45.80 (($4.95 x 4 legs) + ($0.65 x 40 contracts)). With their new pricing, clients will pay only $14.95 ($8.95 + ($0.15 x 40)). That’s a 67% savings.
- No additional fees for broker assisted (call in) trades.
- As of January 1, 2012, TradeKing has introduced an annual fee for customers with “highly inactive accounts”. If you make more than one trade per year in your account, this shouldn’t effect you, but if you go a whole year without making a trade, plus have less than a $2,500 balance in your account, you will incur the new $50 fee.
- It’s important to note that although some (though not many) brokers may appear to offer cheaper commission on some trades, TradeKing offers one of the cheapest non-tiered commission structure out there. You pay $4.95 for all stock trades, no restrictions.
Investments Offered:
Basic stocks and options, mutual funds and ETFs. Ability to buy fixed income investments like CDs, bonds, and US treasury issues (broker assisted only). Solid option for IRAs & ESPs.
Ease Of Use:
The TradeKing platform is extremely intuitive and easy to use. Nicely labelled, and there is a full host of videos and resources to help you get started and learn the platform. Take the video tour below to get an idea of what their platform offers.
Trading/Investment Tools:
- Great Options trading tool: Easily arrange complex option trades such as covered calls, protective puts, spreads, strangles, butterflies, combos, condors, and collars.
- Excellent education resources with free access to the TradeKing Learning Center. An excellent host of videos, mp3s,articles and podcasts to further your education.
- TradeKing offers a very unique and active social media environment, which is integrated into the platform. Talk to other experienced investors, network with others, share tips, and learn from other traders and investors.
- Free real time quotes, streaming news, charts, graphs and useful calculators.
- Maxit Tax Manager allows you to calculate tax consequences of each trade.
- Research tools are OK, but not TradeKing’s strong point, and can sometimes leave something to be desired.
Customer Service/Support:
Very helpful customer service staff accessible via email, phone, and LiveChat (not 24/7, which is a negative). Here’s how Barron’s put it: “(TradeKing) has “terrific” customer service where “questions are typically answered in well under a minute.”"
Awards:
- 4 Stars for Long Term Investing (Barrons, 2011)
- “Among the best for options traders (Barrons, 2011)
- Ranked #1 in customer service by Smart Money (2010).
- Smart Money award for Top Online Broker 4 years running (2004-2009).
- Awarded “Best For Options Traders” by Barrons (2009 & 2010)
- 4 Star rated by Barrons in their annual survey of the best browser based online brokers 2007-2011.
The Final Word…
Current TradeKing Promotional Codes:
Also Read: TradeKing reviews by Kipplingers, SmartMoney and Barrons.
I’ve been happy with my TradeKing account.
Posted by WaysToSave | October 31, 2010, 1:34 amThank you for your review of TradeKing. We appreciate you sharing your opinion and doing the research needed to fairly evaluate this discount online broker. We especially liked your comment about the first two pages of Google being all positive reviews. We have seen fit to link to this article in our independent TradeKing Reviews section. Anyhow, keep up the good work spreading truth.
Posted by MoneyStance Reviews | December 13, 2010, 6:55 pm“New Blackberry, iPhone and Android mobile apps for on-the-go access.”
O RLY? I’m a TradeKing member and an Android phone user. I’d love if TradeKing had an Android app… but they don’t.
Too eager to give positive remarks, perhaps?
Posted by TradeKing Member | March 11, 2011, 1:22 amOops! Our bad. Really sorry. For the record, as of right now (3/11/11) they do have iPhone and Blackberry apps, guess we just assumed they had a bit of love for the Android users too…
Thanks for pointing that out. Review has been updated!
Posted by Editor's Choice | March 11, 2011, 2:12 pmThank you for taking the time to write this! Mucho.
Posted by sk was here | March 11, 2011, 3:21 amThanks for a terrific review. I’m an Options trader and I use OptionsXpress for my trades. They have what’s to me an invaluable tool on their site which Trader King sorely lacks: Virtual Trading. That means I can do papertrades and they’re treated exactly as if I was using real money. I’ve found this priceless in learning how to trade more powerfully. The big downside of OEX is, of course, commissions. On a 200 Contract Trade, their commission would be $600. Trade King’s would be $78.
Posted by Art | July 29, 2011, 4:32 pmI should have specified that the commissions quoted were the totals of both buying and selling those contracts.
Posted by Art | July 29, 2011, 4:47 pmDo not use TRADEKING for trading they have software issues that today just cost me over 200 dollars and they said oh its not showing anymore so theres “no proof” that it goofed up and they wont reimburse the funds like some of the other brokerages. I was lured by their cheap commissions on options…don’t make my mistake of trying to save a few bucks that costs more in the long run.
Posted by george | August 25, 2011, 4:18 pmTRADE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I tried Tradeking for the first time today. I have used ScottTrade, OptionsHouse, Etrade, Ameritrade, Bank Of America, and OptionsXpress… I have NEVER encountered issues like this before.
I am a high-volume options trader, my average trade size is roughly $10k, average execution time on this site was between 20s-30s. I missed out on nearly all my trades today. Every single order had to be a market buy, or a market sell because every single trade had to be ‘reviewed’ (as per a supervisor) and added all of that overhead. I called up and complained… asking how they could justify putting my trades through a review every single time (all of these trades should have ended up at +15% profit today instead I netted a LOSS of 30%)
When asked how I as going to be compensated for all of these issues, they said, we will not compensate you, Wen I asked how they were going to address the ‘required review’ of each trade they said that will not change.
YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR… DO NOT GO WITH TRADEKING IF YOU TRADE A LOT. They may be cheap, but the extra bucks you save are NOT worth it… you WILL lose WAY more money than you will save in fees.
Posted by Matt R | November 10, 2011, 9:38 pmTradekings website has gone down 3 times in one month.The first and third time affected me.The first outage i was given 5 free trades for the problem.The 3rd outage also affected me, so i asked for 10 trades this time.I was told by Dave said that moving to a new broker would probably be better for me.So i signed up with OPTIONSHOUSE, ONLY $3.95 a trade and also gave me 100 free trades.Go figure? The management and staff are polite and professional.It’s the website that is failing.
Posted by Rex Anderson | November 11, 2011, 6:05 pmTradeking website went down again friday the 2nd of December.Go to TRADEKINGS free forum and look under Site problems again and read for yourself.They also will not send myself or my new broker my average cost per share that i have requested.Stay away in my opinion company will be sued or go out of business soon.
Posted by Rex Anderson | December 5, 2011, 7:21 pmTradeking just gave me my average cost per share info.I can complain and i can also say thank you TRADEKING FOR SENDING MY INFO.
Posted by Rex Anderson | December 5, 2011, 9:04 pmoverall good but their platform is lacking it’s speed sometimes and ocassional shut down when markets are moving fast. They say they are fixing the problem but they have been telling me that for two years. Other than that it’s alright.
Posted by John Topolnak | February 2, 2012, 7:16 pmDO NOT GO WITH TRADEKING!
I’m a Tradeking customer for a few years now, but in this year I decided to move my account elsewhere. They have issued an incorrect 1099 form 3 times this year, out of which one was 2 days prior to the tax deadline and another 1 week after!!!
Posted by Zoltan | April 23, 2012, 6:08 pmThis caused me redoing my taxes 3 times this year and filing a correction due to their last correction being 1 after the deadline to file taxes.
Merger of Zecco and TradeKing. I have both accts, and my question is this: Can we still use Maxit (free from tradeking) or will we be forced to get out tax documents from the expensive GainsKeeper (Zecco)?
Also, will tradeking drop the onerous login screen?
Will TK allow an account to stay connected for a reasonable duration, like Zecco does?
Posted by WBS | May 15, 2012, 12:42 pm