Interactive Brokers (IBKR) earns this award due to its wealth of tools for sophisticated investors and its wide pool of assets and markets. The firm makes a point of connecting to as many electronic exchanges as possible. You can trade equities, options, and futures around the world and around the clock. Interactive Brokers’ order execution engine stays on top of changes in market conditions to re-route all or parts of your order to achieve optimal execution, attain price improvement, and maximize any possible rebate. The order routing algorithms seek out a speedy execution and can access hidden institutional order flows (dark pools) to execute large block orders. The wide array of order types include a variety of algorithms as well as conditional orders such as one-cancels-another and one-triggers-another. You can also set up conditional orders based on price, volume, daily P&L, margin cushion, number of shortable shares available, rebate available from the trading venue, and other factors.

Normally a broker will offer their customers a branded trading platform that’s more or less unique to that individual broker, but there are also independent platforms that can connect to multiple brokers. An independent platform can be a good choice for the experienced trader, while using a broker’s own platform is the easiest way to get started for beginners.
While it doesn’t offer as much for beginner traders and new traders, you could host a family office or business portfolio on TradeStation with no problems. In fact, its tools are so good it sells many of them for a fee to professional investors with accounts at other brokers. With an active account at TradeStation, you get those tools for free. Just beware the minimum $2,000 balance or five trades per year to avoid a $95 annual account fee.
If you want to trade options, you’ll need an account with a brokerage that supports options. Each platform is unique and has its own pros and cons, so it is best to understand what you want in an options account and platform before you get started. Follow along to learn more about the best options trading platforms and which may be best suited for your options trading needs.
The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham ought to be required reading for every private investor. While the innovations he brought to stock analysis have long been outdated and the red flags he used to watch out for in a company's accounts are now regulated against by the SEC, many of his insights about thinking about investment still stand. For example, his description of Mr Market is still an excellent way of understanding how a crowd moves with the daily news.

Different trading brokers support different deposit and withdrawal options. The availability of one or more specific payment methods can be of importance to traders, as fees and transit times vary between methods. For some traders it might be essential that a deposit or withdrawal is instantaneous, while others are fine with a processing time of a few days. Any trader making frequent deposits or withdrawals surely wants to look out for low transaction costs. Below we list different payment methods, which brokers support them along with tutorials covering everything a trader needs to know.
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If you’re an active trader looking to try your hand at beating the market, you probably have a good idea of what you want in a brokerage: low costs, premium research, innovative strategy tools and a comprehensive trading platform. Below, we’ve selected the best online brokers in a variety of categories so you can choose one based on your personal priorities.

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