TradeStation Review – Forbes Advisor

TradeStation does a good job in terms of brokerage commissions. However, the amount you will pay depends on the platform you choose (there are several), the assets you are trading, and your total trading volume.

The platform offers commission-free stock and exchange-traded fund (ETF) exchanges, but only for orders of 10,000 stocks or less. If you trade for more shares, TradeStation charges $ 0.005 per share for each security over the 10,000 limit. Keep in mind that large institutional investors, such as investment banks and hedge funds, which potentially trade millions of shares per day, are the primary users of TradeStation.

Users should carefully think about which TradeStation platform they need. If you sign up for TS Select, which requires a minimum deposit of $ 2,000, you can make free transactions online, on the web, and on the desktop program. If you sign up for TS GO, which doesn’t require a minimum deposit, you can only make free transactions online and through the app. TradeStation charges $ 10 per transaction on the desktop app for TS Go users.

For stock options, futures, micro futures, and futures options contracts, there are no commissions, but TradeStation charges a nominal fee per contract:

• Stock options. $ 0.60 per TS Select contract, $ 0.50 per TS GO contract
• To come up. $ 1.50 per TS Select contract, $ 0.85 per TS GO contract
• Micro futures contracts. $ 0.50 per TS Select contract, $ 0.50 per TS GO contract
• Futures options. $ 1.50 per TS Select contract, $ 1.50 per TS GO contract

For mutual funds and bonds, the pricing of TradeStation isn’t as generous. It costs $ 14.95 per mutual fund trade and $ 14.95 per trade plus $ 5 per bond to trade in bonds. For cryptocurrency, its pricing system is based on your account balance, not the size of your transaction. The cost ranges from 0.05% to 0.30% of your balance, depending on the amount in your account.

TradeStation receives payment for the order flow, which means that it collects a fee for routing transactions to certain market makers. This could give market makers a chance to trade before investors. However, TradeStation says it charges the same fees to every market maker and does not base its routing decisions on the size of the discounts.

TradeStation Margin interest rates depend on the amount you borrow. They are very high for small transactions: 9.50% for less than $ 50,000 and 8.75% for $ 50,000 to $ 499,999. From $ 500,000 to $ 2 million, the rate is 5.50%, which is in the middle of the pack, and if you borrow more than $ 2 million, it’s 3.5%, which is very. competitive.

TradeStation doesn’t do a great job in terms of other account fees. It charges an annual inactivity fee of $ 50, unless your account balance is at least $ 2,000 or you make at least five transactions per year. It also charges many other fees, such as $ 125 for an outgoing account transfer, $ 25 for outgoing domestic transfers, $ 1 for paper statements, and $ 75 for a forced margin payment. Other brokers in our online brokerage space survey either did not charge these fees or charge less.