From the moment I opened my account at Lightspeed the customer service has been outstanding. The customer service rep, Jhoel, responded (and continues to respond) to every email, usually within minutes! Not only that, but I believe he is ‘assigned’ to my account. This means that I don’t have to explain or re-explain the issue to a new customer service rep each time. He is polite, knowledgeable and efficient. This means you have a rep who works with you in an ongoing basis, understands issues and develops a rapport with the customer. This should be an industry standard and Lightspeed does this for free. Yes, Web Trader IS a no frills platform, but there are also NO fees of any kind except the occasional SEC fee (to date I have paid just 5 cents on some transactions!) – no ‘maintenance’ fees, no ‘minimum trades per quarter’ (inactivity) fees, no platform fees, only a small minimum balance is required to avoid any fees (I think $5000?) and no BS! They also charge $3 per trade. Hello? I am an active trader, sometimes I don’t trade for a week or two, other times when conditions are ripe I may make 20 trades in 1 day. The fact that there is no pressure to trade (no fees at ALL) as well as some of the lowest per trade costs makes this a no brainer. I make appx 1000 trades a year, so lets do simple math. If I go with a company that calls itself a discount broker with no inactivity, maintenance or other fees like Firstrade for example (which also has no kind of fees, but has the WORST customer service I’ve ever seen, and lousy executions), they charge ‘ONLY’ 6.95 per trade. This means at year’s end I would spend $6,950 in commission with them, and pay only $3,000 with Lightspeed. This is simple math; a savings of $3950 a year, or over $329 per month, and if I trade more, I will save even more. That’s untaxed money added to your net profit.

As far as the ACH, I have been able to transfer in money with no problem, and while I am in the middle of setting up the ACH withdrawal (I mailed in their form), it can be done if you simply mail in the form and follow the instructions provided. I have not actually done an ACH withdrawal yet, but based on my experience with customer service (which in my experience has been the BEST I have ever experienced at any broker, and I’ve been with a few), I’m sure it will be no problem. By the way, did I mention they even have a live chat with operators who can see your account and answer questions in LIVE TIME? Yes Web Trader doesn’t have flashy graphics, and I think they need to improve by making a real time balance and begin pre/after hours trading abilities, but if I want flashy graphics I’ll play video games. If your a grown up and want to have REAL customer service, some of the lowest rates on trades, fast execution and a way to make it easier to make money, I recommend Lightspeed WebTrader and the team of people over there!

Why not just have a tdameritrade/TOS account with a small amount of money in it so that you can use all the free tools. Tdameritrade has no yearly fees. Then use tradeking for your actual trades.

There were a couple things that really bothered me with TradeKing. A wire transfer is cash money. However, if you wire money into TradeKing, and then need to get part of it back, they will not let you take out your money until after 10 days have passed from the time they received your wire. They are simply holding onto your clear cash to float your money and that is pretty crappy of them to do that. The second thing that I didn’t know when I opened my account with them is that they do not let you margin the leveraged ETF shares. That was a big surprise and a deal breaker for me. That is what lead to the surprise of them holding onto my cash that I wired to them for 1o days until I could get it back! That is crazy and for that policy alone I would not trade with them ever again.

If you really must save $5 per trade over better options, and you are going to decide between TradeKing and Zecco, I’d say TradeKing is the better choice of the two evils. Zecco is really bare bones; no pre or after hours trading allowed, no way to trade on mobile platforms, no service after hours, and a poor trading platform without any advanced order entry options. For example, you can’t enter an order triggers order with Zecco. (Say you want to automatically put in a stop order once your buy order is filled, you can’t do that with Zecco.) I had a bad experience trading a very leveraged ETF on 4x margin where the system would not let me enter my stop order. It could have been very serious if the market moved against me while I repeatedly tried to get the system to accept my order.

I’ve moved both my Zecco and TradeKing accounts over to TD Waterhouse. They charge $10 instead of about $5 that TradeKing and Zecco charges. If $5 per trade is going to make or break you, I don’t think you should be trading. I suggest you download the ThinkorSwim software (free) and check it out. It will blow you away. You can paper trade with a $100,000 account to try out the trading platform. For me the advanced real time streaming charts and advanced order capabilities at TD Waterhouse is way worth the extra $5 a trade. I’m really surprised the ThinkorSwim software is free. It blows away the streaming charts at TradeKing. At TradeKing you have to have a minimum of 25 trades per month to use their real time streaming charts. Try ThinkorSwim, you’ll love it. I run it with dual monitors and it gives me a very nice package of charts, news, and very advanced trade entry options. ThinkorSwim was the #1 rated internet broker and they have now merged with TD Waterhouse which was the #1 rated discount broker. Can’t go wrong with that combo.

I was drawn to the lower commissions at Zecco and then moved to TradeKing because of the extremely limited trading platform at Zecco. But it quickly became apparent that you get what you pay for and the extra $5 a trade at TD Ameritrade is well worth it for all the free tools, advanced orders, and real time streaming charts you get. With them you can even put in orders like “If the DOW falls by 3% buy TZA at market.”

PS – Just saw the post from Brad. TOS stands for ThinkorSwim. I agree 100% with him. Zecco and TradeKing is really amateur hour stuff.

Zecco received so much attention and press because they offered free trades to virtually everyone – though that is not the case anymore. Of the three I mentioned, TradeKing is my favorite because of the interface, free tools and education, and the low prices.