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TD Ameritrade review 2010
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TD Ameritrade Commissions and Investments Offered (2010)
- Stocks and ETFs: $9.99
- Options: $9.99 plus $0.75 per contract
- No-load mutual funds: $49.99
- Investment products: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, ETFs
- Minimum to open account: $1,000 equity is required to open an IRA, and $2,000 to open any non-IRA account
- All TD Ameritrade fees
With TD Ameritrade customers get flat rate $9.99 commissions on every internet equity trade, regardless of account
balance or how many shares.
TD Ameritrade's account registration process is well-designed and very fast. Customers could link to their bank account and
fund their brokerage account right away (no micro-deposits verification required). When it's done they are free to
login and explore the website.
TDAmeritrade.com offers very powerful and comprehensive trading tools. And lots of them - more than enough for an average
investor! They do lack a bit in elegance and ease of use some of the best trading platforms have. There is one major feature missing in
TD Ameritrade's trading tools: if one has $1,000 he/she can't enter multiple orders on that $1,000.
Some other trading platforms let you do this: if one order is executed, the rest are automatically cancelled.
TDAmeritrade.com is well designed and customers could easily find all the resources. One really neat feature is an
ability to enter trades throughout the website through the order-entering box that stays on the bottom of each page.
- No surcharges for penny stocks, large orders and after-hours trading
- Large and well known company with many branches
- No maintenance and inactivity fees
- Large selection of third-party research
- $9.99 commission for stocks/ETFs is high, $49 commission for mutual funds is extremely high
- Poor order execution
- The website is sometimes very slow or even down on the most crucial days
TD Ameritrade Review Summary
TD Ameritrade is one of the best-known and largest
discount online stock brokers in the country.
But it's definitely not the cheapest: $9.99 per stock trade
was a good price in 2000, but it is considered high in 2010. $49 to buy or sell mutual fund is extremely expensive!
Unlike some other brokerage firms, TD Ameritrade does not have surcharges on large orders, penny stocks and
extended-hours trading. There are no account maintenance and inactivity charges for all accounts.
TD Ameritrade's IRA accounts don't have setup and annual fees. However, the company did not make it into
our list of Best IRA Brokerage Firms
TD Ameritrade is not the best choice for beginner investors, since at lacks investor community like
that in Scottrade or
TradeKing, where
customers could ask questions, learn from more experienced traders and interact with each other.
TDAmeritrade.com website becomes slow or goes down on high volume days. Sometimes orders take forever to execute.
It often happens on most critical days when markets make big moves. This is the time when customers really need
to be able to access their accounts and have their orders executed promptly. Also, at after-hours trading
we often experience very long and costly order execution delays or orders don't fill at all.
TD Ameritrade is a decent broker, but its commissions are very expensive. The firm was rated second most expensive
firm for frequent traders by Barron's magazine in 2010. There are brokerage firms out there
offering much lower costs and more reliable trading tools. We encourage researching other companies before
making final decision.
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