Trade King Review

Trade King is winner of the Editor's Choice Award of discounted online brokers. They won the award by reasonable price, great customer services and great web interface. I have been a happy customer with them for over a year now. I trade about 5 - 10 round trips each month.

Commission Structure

TradeKing charge $4.95 per stock trade, $.65 additional fee for option trades. This may not be the lowest price for some investors. I want to point out this price is for everyone, no matter you are a very active traders or you only place less than 3 trades a month. I want to remind you this is the active trader’s price in ThinkorSwim. This price is lower than the TD Ameritrade or Scottrade. There are no minimum opening balances, and also no maintenance or inactivity fees to worry about.

Our feeling is that even you can get a cheaper trade someplace else. This is really the no string attached best price. There is no data fee or maintenance fee. If you are a active day trader, you are better off to go with a proprietary trading firm, since you do not have to tie up a large sum of cash there and you actually can get price like a dollar per thousands shares there. For most people, trade king definitely comes out as a sure winner.

Customer Services

This is my experience with one of the largest brokers of the nation. That was one Friday. I had 10 contracts expires next day, and their web interface all the sudden stopped working, I had to call them and place the order over the phone. That was a 50 minutes wait. If you have experience trading options, you will know I lost nearly all the value of contracts since stock moving away from me. Then I was on the phone with the customer services for another 30 minutes explained to me that the agreements I agreed when I opened account include clauses free them from any liability. Finally, they gave me 10 free trades, about is one tenth of option values.

TradeKing is the winner of "#1 in customer service" by Smart Money in last two consecutive years, which speaks of it. I actually personally tested them by placing calls to them three times in the first 6 months with them. I tried to call them and pretended I do not know anything about order types. For once, I pretend I do not know how to place a complex option in their web interface. They picked up the phone in less than 5 minutes, which includes the time playing the automatic messages. Their customer services are very professional and quite knowledgeable. They of course know how to use their web interface. Most impressive they do understand complex option strategies and guide me through the process.

My Expience

  • The new account opening process seemed pretty standard, including having to sign off on all those disclosures. It was all online and you do not have to mail anything in.
  • The first time ACH transfer from your bank takes about 2 weeks. All ACH transfer after that is next day or 2 days.
  • Order types include trailing stops and contingent orders based on price triggers. Common complex options trades like spread, straddle, strangle, combo, butterfly, collar, and condor are supported as well. At first I could not believe they offer this at less than $5.00. I hope you have the same feeling.

Getting Started

If you are holding stocks options in another broker account, you do not have to close out all your position and transfer cash. You can transfer the position over directly. All brokers are required by SEC to allow all customers do this. The only trick your old broker may have is to charge you $50 fee. However, TradeKing is running a special to reimburse your transfer fees up to $150. To my knowledge, this is more than enough to compensate any brokers out there.
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