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ChoiceTrade IRA Review 2012: ROTH, Traditional, SEP, Simple, Rollover Retirement Accounts
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ChoiceTrade IRA Commissions, Fees and Investment Products Offered
- Stocks and ETFs (not direct access): $5 per trade
- Stocks and ETFs (direct access): $0.0025 per share, $1.50 minimum per trade
- Stocks and ETFs (broker-assisted): $10 per trade
- Options: $5 plus $0.15 per contract
- Mutual funds: $25 per trade
- Investment products: stocks, options, mutual funds, Forex, ETFs
- Minimum to open Choicetrade account: $0 for cash account, 2,000 for margin account
- All Choicetrade fees
ChoiceTrade Retirement Account Fees
IRA Annual Fee: $0
IRA Setup Fee: $0
IRA Account Closure: $20
Annual custodial fee: $30
It takes 10 minutes to complete individual account registration at ChoiceTrade -- the forms are short and very
well designed. The firm found an ingenious way to get a customer signature -- they provide a little box where one
can draw their signature with a mouse!
The application was approved in 15 minutes (during work hours, possibly longer on weekends and evenings),
after which the company emailed us user name and password (both are changeable in Settings).
At this point we were ready to use all the features and fund the account. We opened account with $0.
ChoiceTrade IRA Pros
- Direct access trading with lowest per share commissions
- Very low flat-rate commissions
- Powerful trading platforms
- No account minimum, maintenance or inactivity fees
- Free paper trading
- Investor community
ChoiceTrade IRA Cons
- While web-based trading platform with delayed quotes is free, more advanced platforms and streaming quotes are not: web-based Choicestreamer is $14.95/month,
ChoiceTrader Direct pro is $49/month, Choicetrader Select with eSignal is $126/month
- Extended hours stock trades have $0.005 per share surcharge
- No penny stock surcharge up to 500,000 shares. Over 500,000 shares, add 1% of the total dollar value of the order to the normal commission of $5 per trade
to all stock orders of more than 500,000 shares
- $2 surcharge on bulletin board and pink sheet stock trades
- High mutual fund commissions
ChoiceTrade IRA Review
ChoiceTrade is one of the cheapest brokerage firms
in the industry: flat-rate commission plan is $5 for stock and ETF trades. Options commissions are $5 plus $0.55 per contract.
Unlike many other online brokerage companies, there are no surcharges on penny stocks. There is, however, additional $0.005 per share
surcharge on extended hours stock/ETF trades and 1% surcharge on trades with over 500,000 shares. The company does not charge
account maintenance and inactivity fees.
We don't recommend opening account with ChoiceTrade for mutual funds investors - there is a steep $25 per transaction commission.
There are better priced online brokerages for mutual funds, such as
like Optionsxpress (Optionsxpress review - $15 per transaction) or
Optionshouse (Optionshouse review - $10 per transaction).
Since there are no IRA setup and annual IRA fees, ChoiceTrade is a great option for a retirement account.
The firm is not very friendly to beginner investors even though it offers helpful online trader community - most of its customers
are experienced traders. For anyone new to investing, we recommend
to check out our Best Brokerages For Beginners list.
Investors could open an account with ChoiceTrade with no money down, and try their virtual trading and other services with no
obligation (non-IRA accounts have no account closing fee). Since account could be opened with $0, ChoiceTrade is one of the best online
brokerage firms for low/free initial investment.
ChoiceTrade is a brokerage for experienced traders and this is who we recommend it for. For anyone who is not in that category, we
encourage researching companies in our Best Brokerages list.
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