How to Select the Best Options Broker
Before you can even begin to start selecting trading opportunities and making an investment, you’ll be faced with perhaps one of the most important decisions of your investing career: choosing the best options broker to fit your individual needs.
No technological innovation has been better to investors or traders than the internet. Today’s investors can research stock opportunities, look at charts dating back to the early 1900s, and buy and sell prescription cialis online in a moment’s notice through the internet. Subsequently, it should come to no surprise that the top options brokers, from Scottrade to OptionsXpress, are all internet-based.
Before plunging into a broker and filling out the pages upon pages of paperwork now needed to open an options account, there a few things investors should consider.
1.Initial Investment
2.Expected Market Activity
3.Funding
The amount you wish to invest will have a dramatic impact on the selection of brokers, as well as the features and options you have within your brokerage account. For instance, some brokers allow traders to trade options with a minimum deposit as low as $1000, while others not specialized in options require minimum account balances of $1000-2500. Some brokerages also offer special promotional rewards and better interest on account balances for traders with $25,000 or more.
The amount of trades you plan to complete, as well as the amount of volume you will be trading, are very important to your choice of broker.
TradeKing, for example, charges $4.95 per trade plus $.65 per contract, whereas OptionsHouse, a specialty broker, charges $8.50 per trade plus $.15 per contract. A trade of only five lots would cost $8.20 through TradeKing and $9.25 through OptionsHouse.
However, as volume increases, OptionsHouse becomes considerably less expensive. A trade of 100 lots, for example, would cost just $23.50 through OptionsHouse, but a whopping $69.95 through TradeKing.
For the active trader trading large lots, OptionsHouse would be the best online options brokerage. However, for small volume traders, TradeKing would be the recommended options broker.
Also important to selecting a broker is finding one with funding options that suit your needs. Whether you want to be able to ACH transfer money from your bank account to your broker or even access your account balance via a debit card, each broker has different opportunities to access your cash. In addition, each broker has different fees for withdrawals, often charging $2 for a check by snail mail or $10-20 to withdraw your cash via wire transfer.
This is where broker selection is incredibly important, and some traders may be better served to opt for a more premium discount broker. Scottrade may be the best options brokerage for a trader looking for face-to-face communication and withdraws or deposits on the spot at their offices.
When you boil down the process of selecting the best options broker, ultimately it is one that fits your individual needs. No, you won’t be able to meet every need perfectly, but with many different brokers to choose from, it is certain that you can at least find the best options broker for your individual needs.
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Category: Finance/Investing
Keywords: best options broker, best options broker online