We’re delighted to report that Barron’s annual online broker survey by reporter Theresa Carey is out – and we’ve snagged a four-star rating for the second year running! Barron’s gave us love for our “new, slick tools that focus on finding and executing options strategies”, our low-cost commissions, and our “extremely responsive” customer service (including our direct interactions with you on a daily basis via this community). Not too shabby, eh?

I did want to correct one small item. Barron’s noted just one con in their pro-and-con analysis of TradeKing’s offering: “Cons: Some features such as the return on investment calculation can only be used via the TradeKing Community, so they're unavailable if you don't want to share your trading activity with the rest of the world.”  We do actually offer detailed ROI data as part of our secure site. Just go to Accounts > Maxit Tax Manager > ROI to track your account performance privately, if you’d prefer not to publish that information to the broader TK Community. (This page also provides some great detail that our basic performance data badges within the community don’t.)

Even if some folks prefer to keep their account performance private, our hope is that every client using our community publishes as much trade and performance data as they feel comfortable offering. (For the record, you can turn on Certified Trades without taking that second step to turn on performance data. However, it doesn’t work the other way: to share performance data, Certified Trades must be turned on.) We think transparency with this information raises the accountability of all users, resulting in a more credible community of users and less potential abuse by would-be “pump-and-dumpers”.

We’re trying to reward community data-sharing and transparency in other ways, too. If you choose to certify your trades and post a trade note to our community, your trade note may be selected for analysis by one of our trading experts on the TK All-Stars blog. What option trader wouldn’t appreciate a little constructive feedback from an options luminary like Larry McMillan? We hope this form of public mentoring benefits the individual trader and any other community member considering a similar trading strategy.

Here’s to four-stars from Barron’s – and more great innovations ahead in 2008!


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Follow the markets at the TradeKing Blog, learn options strategies from the Options Guy, or check out expert commentary on real client trades at TK All-Stars.

Barron's Review of Online Brokers, March 17, 2008. Barron's is a registered trademark of Dow Jones & Company © 2008