Thursday, December 27, marked TK’s second year of doing business – and what a bangup year it was. I’m super-proud of all the strides we took this year to make our clients’ trading lives more efficient, more informative and just plain more fun. Here’s a quick roundup of major milestones crossed in 2007. (And if you’re curious to compare 2006 to this year, feel free to check out my post on birthday #1.)
BETTER TOOLS AND TRADING.
Huge strides in this area in 2007, just like last year. We opened a brand-new Fixed Income Center and beefed up our ETF Center.
Hopefully you’ve also been tapping into our great new earnings tools for trading ideas, earnings calendars and estimates, and more. And speaking of trading ideas, our new MarketGrader fundamental analysis reports and our Technical Analysis suite should have your brain buzzing with great new ways to approach the markets.
BETTER ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT.
In this category we’ve added Portfolio Director, an awesome new portfolio management tool with plenty of firepower for your asset allocation, performance reports – pretty much any quantitative slicing-and-dicing you’d like to try.
We also just added AutoTrade for clients who like to trade based on signals from a favorite newsletter. Along the same lines of automated trading, we’ve also beefed up our Advanced Orders to include One Cancels Other, just the latest in a growing array of advanced order types to make your trading life easier and more automatic.
Last but not least, don’t forget our site redesign, including cleaner navigation, faster site performance, and other good stuff.
BETTER OPTIONS EDUCATION.
If you haven’t tapped into the TradeKing Options Playbook, you’ve got a real treat in store. (Just ask USA Today or the host of other newspapers touting this revolutionary take on options education.)
This easy-to-use book, written by our very own Options Guy Brian Overby, breaks down options strategies into “plays”, explaining in everyday English why and how you can add these strategies to your repertoire. Clients can access a free online version by logging into their accounts, then going to Education > The Options Playbook; and anyone can buy the printed version of the book at Amazon.com or through the TradeKing bookstore.
EVEN BETTER SERVICE.
We opened a second office this year in Charlotte, NC, so we’ve got even more manpower in two locations to keep delivering great service to all of you.
BETTER COMMUNITY.
If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re enjoying our new community redesign, offering some innovative new ways to interact with other traders, find trading ideas, and have fun as you invest and trade.
In fact, our community grew like gangbusters this year: membership was up 400% to over 5,000 members; more than 400 of you are now maintaining blogs here; and the number of TradeKing investors using Certified Trades and our new Trade Notes to share their trading history and rationale has tripled in the last year to over 200 traders.
SAME GREAT RANKINGS – TWO YEARS RUNNING!
Once again we ranked #1 Discount Broker in the annual brokerage survey by SmartMoney, the Wall Street Journal’s personal finance magazine. (The ranking was based on commissions, interest rates, mutual funds, products, banking amenities, tools, research, and customer service.)
We also earned four stars in Barron’s annual survey of online brokerages, and Consumer Reports rated us #3 of the 19 brokerages they rated in a recent survey. Not too shabby, eh?
THANKS, EVERYONE.
It’s great to know all this progress is attracting attention: we’re now over 60,000 client accounts with plenty of rave reviews among them. So a big THANK YOU to all of you if you’ve given us a try for the first time this year, or told a friend or colleague to open an account. We’re pleased you chose us and working hard every day to make you feel great about that choice.
Here’s to another bang-up year in 2008 --cheers!
[image: Birthday Cake Lit by CraftyGuy on flickr
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Follow the markets at the TradeKing Blog, or learn more about options strategies from the Options Guy.
SmartMoney is a joint publishing venture of Dow Jones & Company, Inc. and Hearst Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
Barron's is a registered trademark of Dow Jones & Company © 2007.
