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The brokerage offers extensive resources for learning the ins and outs of options trading. You can choose to trade online or use the advanced StreetSmart Central trading platform, which has most features that expert options traders would want think quotes and trades, for example. Trades are 65 cents per contract with no base commission. Strict margin trading rules and relatively high margin rates when you borrow money to invest more.
Webull is a newer investment platform that charges nothing for stock, ETF, and options trades, including options base fees and contract fees. The only fees you are likely to run into at Webull are for margin trading, short sales, advanced data feeds, and some small fees charged by regulators no matter where you trade.
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With ordinary options trading activity, you could get by without paying anything at all. Webull offers web, mobile, and desktop platforms ideal for the most active traders. When you open an account for the first time, Webull may offer generous new customer promotions in the form of free stock. Interactive Brokers is a top brokerage for advanced and active options traders. While it offers professional-level accounts, even those of us without millions under management can find our needs well-covered by Interactive Brokers.
IBKR Lite has fixed pricing for options. The Pro tier gives you access to fixed or tiered pricing options and longer trading hours.
Thanks to tiered pricing, costs can go down to 15 cents per contract with high volumes. Options trading is a form of active investing in which traders make a bet on the future value of specific assets, including stocks, funds, and currencies. Instead of buying and holding the underlying asset directly, you hold a contract that gives you the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell that asset at a specific price on a specific future date and time.
If your bet is wrong, your option becomes worthless. Options trading can be very complex. It may use multiple conditions, and market prices change almost constantly during the trading day, or even 24 hours a day in some markets. This makes options trading very risky compared with long-term investments in mutual funds, ETFs, or even many stocks.
Thanks to brokers offering accounts with no minimums and no commissions, you could start trading options with just a few dollars. There is no minimum required to trade options at many brokerages, but you may have to complete an additional application to do this. Margin trading lets you borrow money to invest more, but there are fees and additional risks involved. If you are brand new to options, consider starting with only a paper trading account.
These work like a stock market game and allow you to test strategies with fake money before putting your real dollars at risk. Trade Hot Keys Yes Ability to designate keyboard hotkeys for on the fly trading. Trade Journal Yes Provides a trade journal for writing notes. All entries are dated, titled, and may be tagged with a specific stock ticker.
Adding text notes to individual stock charts does NOT count. Paper Trading No Offers the ability to use a paper practice portfolio to place trades. Watch Lists - Streaming Yes Site or platform only one needed watch lists stream real-time quote data. Watch Lists - Total Fields Total available fields when viewing a watch list. Examples: price, symbol, bid, ask, volume. Full quote and research results must be available for 4 of the 5 following tickers: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google. Research - Mutual Funds Yes Offers mutual funds research. Research - Fixed Income Yes Offers fixed income research.
Full quote and research results must be available for fixed income securities such as individual US Treasuries.
Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade Haven't Halted Any Stock Trading This Week
Interactive chart optional. Must be via website or platform, mobile excluded as separate category. Examples: domestic equities, foreign equities, bonds, cash, fixed income. Misc - Portfolio Builder Yes A tool that asks hypothetical risk tolerance questions then assists clients with building a diversified portfolio of ETFs based on their answers. Stock Research - Earnings Yes View analysis of past earnings.
Examples: Consensus vs actual data, EPS growth, sales growth. Stock Research - Insiders Yes View a list of recent insider transactions.
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Stock Research - Social Yes View social sentiment analysis, eg twitter analysis NOT just a stream of recent tweets , for individual equities. Examples: Morningstar, Lippers. Mutual Funds - Fees Breakdown Yes A clear breakdown of the fund's fees beyond just the expense ratio. Screener - Stocks Yes Offers a equities screener. Screener - Mutual Funds Yes Offers a mutual fund screener.
Screener - Options Yes Offers a options screener. Commonly referred to as a spread creation tool or similar. Screener - Bonds Yes Offers a bond screener. Education Feature Value Definition Education Stocks Yes Provides a minimum of 10 educational pieces articles, videos, archived webinars, or similar with the primary subject being stocks. All content must be easily found within the website's Learning Center. Education Options Yes Provides a minimum of 10 educational pieces articles, videos, archived webinars, or similar with the primary subject being options.
Education Mutual Funds Yes Provides a minimum of 10 educational pieces articles, videos, archived webinars, or similar with the primary subject being mutual funds.
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Education Fixed Income Yes Provides a minimum of 10 educational pieces articles, videos, archived webinars, or similar with the primary subject being fixed income. Education Retirement Yes Provides a minimum of 10 educational pieces articles, videos, archived webinars, or similar with the primary subject being retirement. Investor Dictionary Yes An online dictionary of at least 50 investing terms. Webinars Monthly Avg Total educational client webinars hosted, on average, each month. Webinars Archived Yes Provides an archived area to search and watch previously recorded client webinars.
Live Seminars Yes Provides at least 10 live, face-to-face educational seminars for clients each year. Must be delivered by a broker staff member.
Videos Yes Are educational videos available? At least A video is a short clip, typically several minutes in duration, that explains a trading concept, term, or strategy. Archived webinars and platform demos do NOT count. Retirement Calculator Yes Offers a retirement calculator.
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Interactive Learning - Quizzes No Quizzes offered within the education center. Must include multiple questions and score results. Example service provider - Morningstar, InvestingTeacher.
- Commission Notes.
- Best brokers for options trading in March 2021.
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- Schwab's Options Trading Approval? : Schwab.
Account login most common integration. Quotes Real-time Yes Mobile app offers real-time quote data. Quotes Streaming No Mobile app offers streaming or auto refreshing real-time stock quote results. More specifically, the quote screen must auto-refresh at least once every three seconds. Watch List Real-time Yes Watch list in mobile app uses real-time quotes. Watch List Streaming No Watch list in mobile app uses streaming real-time quotes. More specifically, the watch-list must auto-refresh at least once every three seconds.
Watch List Syncing Yes Watch list in mobile app syncs with client's online account. Updates made in the mobile app migrate to the online account and vice versa.