SmartMoney’s annual broker survey for 2009 is out, and once again TradeKing made a really strong showing. You can check out the full story here, but here are the highlights:

•    TradeKing placed #4 overall, behind only E*TRADE, Fidelity and Schwab – three heavyweights who charge trading fees and commissions more than twice as high as us.

•    We handily beat a few other major players with more expensive fees, including TD Ameritrade, Scottrade, OptionsXpress and Bank of America.  

•    We scored the maximum 5 stars for customer service and trading tools – our second year in a row with that distinction.  

SmartMoney’s 2009 Broker Survey evaluated 16 discount brokerages in five main categories: mutual funds & investment products, banking services, trading tools, research, and customer service.  

It’s gratifying to be recognized by the Wall Street Journal’s magazine for offering self-directed investors a great deal. But what’s really gratifying is knowing that we’re exceeding your expectations every day. As always, I invite you to share your feedback or comments about the job we’re doing – just comment here or send me a private message.

At TradeKing, we’re all about supporting your investing success with excellent service, great trader education, and one of the best values for your money you’ll find anywhere. Let us know how we’re doing! We’re always glad to hear from you.

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TradeKing provides self-directed investors with discount brokerage services, and does not make recommendations or offer investment, financial, legal or tax advice.

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CONGRATS once again and I am not surprised.

It would be interesting to see as an anonymous study, which account holders made or now make the best returns. Lots of hype about self-directed accounts, including my own 'ahem' unbiased opinion. Would make for an interesting study though if you could get anonymous numbers somehow.

Trade King is doing an outstanding job in all departments!

Thanks for the compliments! We're pretty proud of the results, too.

I'll tell you what would be REALLY tough in crafting that study you mention, Corbinb2: getting professional advisors to disclose the returns they generated for their customers. I strongly suspect advisors are not nearly as competitive with self-directed investors or the indices as they want us all to believe.

Congrats!

I'm guessing you are right Don. I would say making it completely anonymous, sort of like when you apply for a job and they send you that little card about your race and sex and age without your name on it.

However, how would we would be able to accurately count on it wiht nothing to back it up? It's a quandry.

 Heck it's the 21st century now, I bet all that info is out on the Internet in some form?

as a defector from Zecco Trading once they instituted a much higher min. balance (25m) to maintain free trades I have been happy with my defection to Tradeking even though now I pay commisions on each trade, the customer service and wealth of knowledge on the site has made the charge bearable....

bigdog said: Thanks for the compliments! We're pretty proud of the results, too.

I'll tell you what would be REALLY tough in crafting that study you mention, Corbinb2: getting professional advisors to disclose the returns they generated for their customers. I strongly suspect advisors are not nearly as competitive with self-directed investors or the indices as they want us all to believe.

  i expect that there are alot of solid advisors out there along with a number who are just salespersons................i think the interesting stats would be around how many accounts the average investor has and the asset split percentage wise between the self-directed accounts vs advised and also the split between the online discount portion and the  traditional bank/brokerage

Thanks for the love, everyone! Always glad to hear you're happy with the value TradeKing provides.

Maybe I was too tough on the advisors, Coach. You're right that there are certainly decent ones among the hucksters. But for the fees they charge, I think consumers have a right to know an advisor's performance stats before paying up. Mutual fund managers must publish a report card of how their fund has performed across various timeframes; that kind of transparency should apply to anyone who invests others' money on their behalf.

Congrats Don.