{"id":2688,"date":"2009-03-14T07:42:33","date_gmt":"2009-03-14T12:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/?p=2688"},"modified":"2016-09-20T04:20:09","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T08:20:09","slug":"finding-the-perfect-broker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/14\/finding-the-perfect-broker\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Perfect Broker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"verdana\"><a href=\"http:\/\/online.barrons.com\/article\/SB123698734062425763.html?page=1\">Great writeup in Barron&#8217;s<\/a> this week that covers online brokers. Actually, some may be on- and off-line, but this is a good reference point to find out which platform may be the best fit once you leave your high priced broker. Of course that assumes that you are looking to make a change and take matters into your own hands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verdana\">If you think about it, how much worse can you do as compared to the \u00a0 many pros that got out<!--more--> too late (assuming they got out at all) and only BUY &#8211; never seeming willing to sell. But that is not the point&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p class=\"verdana\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/brokers.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2689 aligncenter\" title=\"brokers\" src=\"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/brokers.gif\" alt=\"brokers\" width=\"501\" height=\"374\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"verdana\">We use a few brokers for client accounts. Here is one of the leaders of the survey and Barron&#8217;s writer Theresa W. Carey&#8217;s summary.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"verdana\"><strong>Interactive Brokers<\/strong> (<a class=\"verdana\" href=\"http:\/\/www.interactivebrokers.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.interactivebrokers.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p class=\"verdana\"><strong>Pros:<\/strong> IB is once again the low-cost leader and international star. It gears itself for professional and semiprofessional traders, investors, hedge funds, brokers and advisers. The contract-search feature, new this year, lets you search by symbol or company name, generating a list of products you can trade. For instance, if you type in &#8220;Ford,&#8221; you will see everything available &#8212; options, futures, stocks and bonds. Overseas markets appear, too. IB&#8217;s charting application was significantly improved this year. For those who trade huge blocks of stock at once, IB&#8217;s ScaleTrader lets you break the order into smaller components and send it through in smaller pieces.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verdana\">Once your order is set up, you can watch it on the Scale Progress table. We also like IB&#8217;s forex-trading screens, the ability to create your own index basket of stocks, the wide range of international equities, futures and option, and the new options portfolio algorithm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verdana\"><strong>Cons:<\/strong> Nonprofessionals still complain that the Traders Workstation is difficult to handle, so if you aren&#8217;t a very frequent, around-the-world trader, this isn&#8217;t the broker for you. There is limited personal service at IB, but you aren&#8217;t paying for it, either.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"verdana\">Check out the article as is does a good summary of many and will help to direct you toward what you may be looking for. Platform + service + quality of execution + cost is the formula as I see it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verdana\"><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Great writeup in Barron&#8217;s this week that covers online brokers. Actually, some may be on- and off-line, but this is a good reference point to find out which platform may be the best fit once you leave your high priced broker. Of course that assumes that you are looking to make a change and take [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[492,497],"class_list":["post-2688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stocks","tag-weekly-gameplan","tag-strategy","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}