Which Online Trading Service to use?

[Roan]

I have a relatively small (3-5K)amount of money to play with in the market, and I was wondering what online brokerage services you all found to be the best.

I am leaning towards Scottrade, mostly due to the low commissions/no inactivity fees.

Comments?

[RollaJ]

https://www.optionsxpress.com/

read the views on that link, they have GREAT trading tools and prices are fair, not the lowest, but $15 a trade is great when you consider all they give you

[ElSapo]

I use Scottrade... it isn't the best interface, but the price is right if you're going to be doing any trading. If you're just buying and holding, this is less of an issue. Scott also just dropped limit order prices to $7 from $12 (becomes effective jan. 3 I think).

[Ray Zee]

unless you are trading a real lot. fidelity or vanguard. they are the biggest and always answer the phone. just wait until another market problem and you can t get through. they also give all the extras such as ira, mm fund, easy transer of money and debit cards. cheap service is not what you want for small amount of trades.

[GeorgeF]

I would suggest you start with vanguard.com mutual funds. If you want to invest a bit more time you can get a brokerage account and buy ETFs. The problem is that it is very unlikey that with $5,000 any time you spend thinking will increase your results enough to make up for the time you will spend on active investing.

Scottrade evidently allows you to trade Canadian securities. If they allow you to hold you money in Canadian $ it might offer a diversificatiion possibility.

[goodedesign]

[RollaJ]

[ QUOTE ]
$1.00 options trades commission

[/ QUOTE ]
Do they allow you to direct the order to the mkt you choose? What is the min per order