[nandv]

A follow up question, how about option trading?
I am aware of thinkorswim, now part of TD Ameritrade.
Any other with good pricing, and good software?
Thanks.

[hollisnan]

To add to all this intrigue >;->, the February 2011 edition of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine has an article titled "The Best of the Online Brokers" (p34) that references some of the names we have been vetting here. You may find it interesting!

[butterfield]

Originally Posted by hollisnan »

To add to all this intrigue >;->, the February 2011 edition of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine has an article titled "The Best of the Online Brokers" (p34) that references some of the names we have been vetting here. You may find it interesting!

Thank you Hollisnan, I already followed your advice and visited Kiplinger´s webpage, its "Best of the Online Brokers" article was extremely helpful.

Thank YOU.

[hollisnan]

Now that Butterfield had clarified his trading strategy, it puts things in a new perspective. I guess there are different ways to define "low priced stocks". For some, it's anything less than $10. For others, it's anything less than $1. IDEA - a (hopefully) simple Excel spreadsheet to calculate the commissions for several brokers at different share prices and order sizes. This could be expanded into the type of regression analysis they teach in business school, to optimize a set of variables for a wide range of possible scenarios, but that would probably be WAAAY over our heads.

Just for clarity, tradestation does offer a fee-per-trade option. Pick yer poison!

I stand by my earlier point that even modest variances in execution, sliippage, spreads and other factors could outweigh differences in commission rates. Caveat trader!