Best Brokerage Account 2020 [Video]
|In this article, I’m going to dive into the details of selecting the best brokerage account in 2020.
Here are some of the questions we’re going to consider when selecting the best brokerage account:
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What brokers do we have?
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What are the best criteria?
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What is the difference between the brokerages?
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Where can I open a brokerage account?
It’s 2020… and we have several options to choose from when selecting a brokerage!
When my head trading coach Mark Hodge and I had a discussion of which brokerages to consider, we created a simple list of the most important criteria to consider.
Here are the top 8 criteria that I use when selecting a brokerage:
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Easy to short stocks
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Sell Naked Calls and Puts (level 3 and 4)
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Margin Interest Rate
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Understanding Margin impact
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Commissions for 50 options
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Platform ease of use
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Live data feed
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Customer service
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Overall rating
It’s important to remember that you may have a different set of criteria or requirements for the brokerage that you select. The criteria I’ve selected is based on my own personal experience. These are the things that I feel are important when selecting the best brokerage.
What brokers are we going to review?
Although there are many different brokerages to choose from, we’re going to review TD Ameritrade, Interactive Brokers, Webull and Tastyworks.
TD Ameritrade
Overall Rating
TD Ameritrade is a great platform. For the purpose of this article, we gave this platform 4th place. Although TD Ameritrade has extensive features, we found it to have higher commissions and lack some of the features we need. TD Ameritrade has fantastic customer service and free live data, but it lacks the ability to short stocks easily and it has high margin interest rates. This translates to less profitability over a long period of time.
Easy to short stocks No
Sell Naked Calls and Puts (level 3 and 4) Yes
Margin Interest Rate 9.25%
Understanding Margin impact Easy
Commissions for 50 options $65
Platform ease of use Ok
Live data Feed Free
Customer service Great
Interactive Brokers
Overall rating
We found in our review of Interactive Brokers that the platform had poor customer service. As a professional trader, I typically don’t need extensive customer service. But the purpose of this review is to help newer traders select the best brokerage for them. For this reason, we’re giving Interactive Brokers 3rd place in this review.
Easy to short stocks Yes
Sell Naked Calls and Puts (level 3 and 4) Yes
Margin Interest Rate 1.55%
Understanding Margin impact Difficult
Commissions for 50 options $65
Platform ease of use No
Live data feed Pay
Customer service Poor
Webull
Overall Rating
I really love what I saw when looking at Webull. ZERO commissions, very easy to use, and shorts stocks easily! What’s not to love? Well.. there are a few things. You can’t sell naked calls and puts YET. Supposedly they will have this feature in late 2020. When Webull has this feature, I will definitely be signing up and using their platform! Since we’re looking for the BEST brokerage…we’re giving Webull a solid 2nd place!
Easy to short stocks Yes
Sell Naked Calls and Puts (level 3 and 4) NOT yet.
Margin Interest Rate 6.99%
Understanding Margin impact Ok
Commissions for 50 options $0
Platform ease of use Very Easy
Live data feed ??
Customer service ??
TastyWorks
Overall Rating
From my perspective, TastyWorks is the BEST brokerage platform for 2020. It’s very easy to use has cheap commissions and the best functionality out of all of the brokerages we have considered to date. We’re giving Tastyworks first place in this competition!
Easy to short stocks Yes
Sell Naked Calls and Puts (level 3 and 4) Yes
Margin Interest Rate 8%
Understanding Margin impact Super Easy
Commissions for 50 options $10
Platform ease of use Very Easy
Live data feed Free
Customer service Good
In Conclusion
When selecting the best brokerage of 2020, we believe the clear choice is TastyTrade. Due to the ease of use, functionality, and overall costs, this platform is a great place to get started. It’s important to remember that you may have a different set of criteria when selecting a brokerage. The information considered in this article is my personal opinion. Please do your own diligent research when making important decisions regarding the trading platform you will use.
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