TD Ameritrade Reviews And Information
TD Ameritrade Commissions
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Market:
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$9.99
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Limit:
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$9.99
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Options:
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$9.95 + $0.75 per contract.
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Rate this Broker
TD Ameritrade was formed by the merger of TD Waterhouse and Ameritrade in 2006. The combined company is one of the larger discount brokerages, with over 6 million customers, and $257 billion under management. It still has a long way to go before it catches up with Fidelity in size, however. While offering services appropriate for all levels of investors, TDAmeritrade focuses on mid-range accounts — those that are larger and more active than average, but not quite big enough to warrant working with full-service firms.
TD Ameritrade Services
TD Ameritrade offers a broader array of services than most discount brokerages, including integrated stock screeners, interactive charting tools, investor education and online banking. They also offer individualized, independent investment advice that is not based on commissions.
The firm has a flat commission structure. $9.99 per trade, regardless of account size or activity level. It offers free research from S&P, Morningstar, Reuters, and Briefing.com. It also allows clients to pre-enter up to 50 orders to be executed at a later time, which is a useful feature for those who are watching for short-lived opportunities.
Finally, TD Ameritrade operates over 100 local offices where customers can meet with advisors in person.
TD Ameritrade Reviews in the Media
TD Ameritrade has been praised for its low commissions and wide selection of no-load funds. However, it has also been criticized for high margin rates, high fees for broker-assisted trades, fees for paper statements and annual account summaries, and poor navigation on its Web site.
Downsides to consider for TDAmeritrade
TDAmeritrade has a number of annoying extraneous fees, including a monthly fee for paper statements, and a fee for a year-end summary which most brokers provide free. It has limited offerings for active traders. Finally, its customer service has received mediocre ratings from clients overall.
Bottom Line
TDAmeritrade is a reasonable choice for most traders, but is not the best value available. Self-directed investors would likely fare better with
Zecco.com or
TradeKing.com, instead. More active traders should consider
MB Trading. Finally, traders wanting more personalized service should consider
Fidelity or
Schwab.
User Rating
Latest User Review for TD Ameritrade
Notable Features
Access to advisors, extended hours trading
Investments Available
Stocks, options, bonds, funds.
Alternate Spellings
TDAmeritrade,
Ameritrade,
Ameratrade,
TD Waterhouse,
TDWaterhouse
Based on 5 votes.
I have been using Fidelity for both personal investing and for managing my 401K for over 10 years. I like the fact that all my accounts for the kid's collegte funding, 401K, stock investments are easy to manage from one place. I think that the conditional trading is a great feature. Here is how I use it: I purchase a stock, and immediately use the conditional training to put in a sell limit and stop loss, so then I can walk away and not manage it every day. The two improvements that Fidelity could make would be to not cancel these, sometimes they just dissappear and I have to re-enter them. The other one is to a better job at tracking international stocks, you can't put in conditional sell orders for stocks like Lenovo or Vevendi which are out of the country. On international individual stocks they don't even show daily gains or losses. However, their mutual fund purchases are really easy and have good research tools to make decisions.