Interactive Brokers (www.interactivebrokers.com): The Broker of Choice for the Thrifty Trader

You have to hand it to Interactive Brokers.

They were one of the first online brokerages to offer discount per-share trading commissions. While other online brokerages were still charging flat commissions of anywhere between $9.95 and $19.95 per trade, Interactive Brokers was offering a commission of just 1 cent per share. For a smaller trade, especially a smaller daytrader, this offered a tremendous amount of savings over the course of the year, and the trader didn't have to worry about sacrificing quickness of fills or quality customer service. Interactive Brokers offered the entire package from the very beginning, and they are still seeking to improve and acquire an even larger customer base.

The company offers plenty of cool features. First off, their base rate for equity trades is even lower now, at $0.005 per share. Options trades and bonds trades are a bit more, but still very reasonable. The company offers both a Java-based application and an HTML based WebTrader. They also offer an API for those traders who are also programmers, so that you can build your own tools and functionality. Another cool feature that the company offers is the Universal Account, which allows you trade all sorts of different markets from one trading account.

The company has been around for a long time now, and has won numerous awards. The company is pretty highly respected in the trading community; most traders that I know have an Interactive Brokers account as part of their trading arsenal. If you plan on buying a stock and don't plan on trading in and out very quickly, then Interactive Brokers is probably the choice for you, as their trading fees are absolutely rock bottom. The company has acquired quite a large customer base over the years, and it is no wonder that the company boasts a $1 billion dollar market cap after just recently going public.

If you are new to trading, then Interactive Brokers would be pretty highly recommended, as the costs are rock bottom and the interface is very easy to use. Highly recommended.

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