The typical answers are TD Ameritrade, Interactive Brokers, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and eTrade. Note that CS and TD are merging but their products and accounts remain separate for now and they will merge those over the next few years. Robinhood, webull, etc are the newcomers that are popular in a memestocks sort of way, but aren’t actually better. Robinhood does give you access to IPOs that you can’t get elsewhere if you’re into that kind of risk. If you’re a casual investor though, the nuanced differences between these platforms won’t matter as much for you.
Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?
11–20 of 55 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?
#12Fidelity and Vanguard for best execution—which is the most important aspect for me.
Self-clearing, sufficiently capitalized and don’t accept PFOF. They are improving their trading UI and I think they’re definitely headed in the right direction on that front. I don’t yet trade options on either, so no comment on that.
Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?
#13Charles Schwab. I’ve been a customer for decades.
The good: Similar to vanguard and fidelity on most dimensions which are also mentioned in this thread, but they’re also a bank so you can have a checking + savings account with them and all your finances are then in one place (IRA, brokerage, banking all in one). Their checking accounts offer free ATM withdrawals from any ATM world wide and when traveling they offer the actual exchange rate when withdrawing cash. Also, they have excellent customer service in my experience. Their research offering on equities is decent. Also $0 commissions on on trading equities, ETFs, most bonds and CDs.
Down sides in my opinion (YMMV): options trading is meh on Schwab, but most people shouldn’t be dabbling in options anyway. Their fully managed offerings have 0% fees, but the funds they pick internally are somewhat higher fee Schwab funds so watch out for that. You might be better off managing your own set of mutual funds/ETFs rather than going with their robo advisor if that’s what you’re after. Sometimes they do maintenance on their site on the weekends that spans beyond the midnight hours. Their mobile app is very functional but some features are slow even on an iPhone 12. Few physical branches if that’s important to you.
Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?
#14Alpaca for algorithmic trading and Ally for standard portfolio. Both have solid APIs, zero commissions and the required orders for my strategies.
Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?
#15Interactive Brokers, great execution quality, normally use their desktop version since find their mobile app somewhat cumbersome.. P.S. Oliver, is that really you? How was your space flight? :) Btw your comment is "dead" so you should contact the admin to fix that.
How do you gauge the execution quality?
Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?
#16You didn't ask the country so my answers might slightly differ
1. India - Kite by Zerodha[0]. Zero brokerage fees (!) for equity delivery. INR 20 for options. Easy to understand UI and great community
2. Australia - Superhero [1]. Zero brokerage for buying ETFs. Easy app but given my infrequent usage (once a month) not really a problem.
[0]https://zerodha.com/ [1]https://app.superhero.com.au/log-in
Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?
#17Fidelity and Vanguard for best execution—which is the most important aspect for me. Self-clearing, sufficiently capitalized and don’t accept PFOF. They are improving their trading UI and I think they’re definitely headed in the right direction on that front. I don’t yet trade options on either, so no comment on that.
Vanguard index funds are pretty much anyone who isn’t wealthy needs.
The only think I can’t figure out is why isn’t it possible to park USD 5k in cash in my Roth IRA at Vanguard every April and have them buy VTSAX if it goes below some threshold automatically say USD 60.
Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?
#18I like TD Ameritrade (now owned by Schwab, but still has their own web site) for its generally good execution (as far as I can tell), but mostly because it still has the best mobile (iPad) app that I use for the majority of my stock and options trading. Note that there are two apps: TD Ameritrade and thinkorswim (aka TOS). TOS is the one you want, and their desktop TOS app is also really good, but I actually find the…
Also have good free API.
I wonder if your API trades show up in your history so you can view them from the ToS client.
Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?
#19You didn't ask the country so my answers might slightly differ 1. India - Kite by Zerodha[0]. Zero brokerage fees (!) for equity delivery. INR 20 for options. Easy to understand UI and great community 2. Australia - Superhero [1]. Zero brokerage for buying ETFs. Easy app but given my infrequent usage (once a month) not really a problem. [0] https://zerodha.com/ [1] https://app.superhero.com.au/log-in
thanks, you can't trade options with Superhero, right?
Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?
#20I haven’t really investigated it too hard. I use Robinhood because it has 0 fees for stocks, options, and crypto (but I’ve mostly moved on to an exchange that lets me withdraw crypto). I also use Robinhood because it has 2.5% interest for margin (with 6% interest on the first $1000, counting the $5/month Robinhood Gold fee). And also, instant deposits.
I’ve found the UI to be pretty poor in some respects.