Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?

51 pointsHedgemaster52 comments

Hi HN community,

I would appreciate if you could share which trading brokerage (if any) you prefer the most and why (execution quality, UI, fees, user support, etc.)

Thank you!

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I like TD Ameritrade (now owned by Schwab, but still has their own web site) for its generally good execution (as far as I can tell), but mostly because it still has the best mobile (iPad) app that I use for the majority of my stock and options trading. Note that there are two apps: TD Ameritrade and thinkorswim (aka TOS). TOS is the one you want, and their desktop TOS app is also really good, but I actually find the iPad app to be more than sufficient for most of my trading.

They continue to work and improve it (which I'm relieved about, because Schwab's mobile app is awful, Webull is worse, and I don't know how anyone uses RobinHood for options trading, it's so hard to do cancel/replace orders with them, which I do constantly).

Also have good free API.

I wonder if your API trades show up in your history so you can view them from the ToS client.

Thank you for such a detailed review!

Does TOS have any options-related insights like easy-to-analyse implied volatility smile for Sentiment Analysis? Or like volatility skew to easily identify which options are under-priced/overpriced?

Totally agree with u regarding RH, built for gambling not trading..

The desktop TOS has a bunch of options analysis tools (mobile has some, too), but honestly I don't use them very much so don't know them too well.

Fidelity and Vanguard for best execution—which is the most important aspect for me. Self-clearing, sufficiently capitalized and don’t accept PFOF. They are improving their trading UI and I think they’re definitely headed in the right direction on that front. I don’t yet trade options on either, so no comment on that.

Vanguard index funds are pretty much anyone who isn’t wealthy needs.

The only think I can’t figure out is why isn’t it possible to park USD 5k in cash in my Roth IRA at Vanguard every April and have them buy VTSAX if it goes below some threshold automatically say USD 60.

You're hoping to "buy the dip" here, right? You can set up a stop order to do that. It'll just have to be for the ETF version of a fund.

Turns out that the old adage "time in the market beats timing the market" almost always wins, and there's no upside to trying to buy the dip:

https://www.pwlcapital.com/resources/buy-the-dip/

There's no upside to buying the dip for you. It's exhasting how any HN investing discussion gets watered down by unsolicited anti-intellectual personal finance advice.

Thank you. Fidelity doesn't charge PFOF on stocks but they do accept PFOF on options. The bid-ask spreads for most stocks in negligible so PFOF-related damage wouldn't matter that much anyway, what cannot be said about options..

I would second this answer. These two are big enough to have solid support paths should you have questions and want to talk to a human. I don't find UI to be important because I'm not in the apps or web sites often enough and I don't do options.

Charles Schwab. I’ve been a customer for decades.

The good: Similar to vanguard and fidelity on most dimensions which are also mentioned in this thread, but they’re also a bank so you can have a checking + savings account with them and all your finances are then in one place (IRA, brokerage, banking all in one). Their checking accounts offer free ATM withdrawals from any ATM world wide and when traveling they offer the actual exchange rate when withdrawing cash. Also, they have excellent customer service in my experience. Their research offering on equities is decent. Also $0 commissions on on trading equities, ETFs, most bonds and CDs.

Down sides in my opinion (YMMV): options trading is meh on Schwab, but most people shouldn’t be dabbling in options anyway. Their fully managed offerings have 0% fees, but the funds they pick internally are somewhat higher fee Schwab funds so watch out for that. You might be better off managing your own set of mutual funds/ETFs rather than going with their robo advisor if that’s what you’re after. Sometimes they do maintenance on their site on the weekends that spans beyond the midnight hours. Their mobile app is very functional but some features are slow even on an iPhone 12. Few physical branches if that’s important to you.

Schwab's website has been consistently buggy for me. Would not recommend.

I have a Schwab account, but I strongly dislike both their Web UI and their (iPad) mobile apps. They were built decades ago and for the most part they show it. The mobile trading for stocks (forget options) is just awful (including failing to accept my trade for no easily understood reason). My hope is since they bought TD Ameritrade that they'll dump their own trading apps and use TDA's.

You didn't ask the country so my answers might slightly differ

1. India - Kite by Zerodha[0]. Zero brokerage fees (!) for equity delivery. INR 20 for options. Easy to understand UI and great community

2. Australia - Superhero [1]. Zero brokerage for buying ETFs. Easy app but given my infrequent usage (once a month) not really a problem.

[0]https://zerodha.com/ [1]https://app.superhero.com.au/log-in

thanks, you can't trade options with Superhero, right?

You are right. You can't trade options with SH :)

Alpaca for algorithmic trading and Ally for standard portfolio. Both have solid APIs, zero commissions and the required orders for my strategies.

Disclosure: I work on this :)

I'm on the founding team of Options AI. We're taking a fresh approach and focusing on removing the complexity and friction involved with creating and managing options trades. Our customers tend to use options to generate income rather than the YOLO trades seen on reddit. The interface is visual and translates the information embedded in the chain so you can deploy smarter strategies and manage portfolio risk. Visit our site for more info: https://www.optionsai.com

It's $5 per trade - any strategy or size but I've added a referral link with 2 months free if you would like to give us a try. https://id.options.ai/register?code=hackernews

I looked at several and settled on M1Finance, where I’m able to create a few “pies” (allocations among various ETFS) and even mixtures of pies, and just forget about it.

It’s not strictly a “trading” platform, in the sense that it’s not meant for day trading.

Was intrigued by Titan but they are pricey.

Totally agree with your point, M1Finance is not for trading.. definitely not options, more like long-term ETF investing.

I never heard of Titan, is it a desktop or mobile app? Or both? Could you please share a link?

If you trade options but have no time to stay on top of all the relevant developments, should probably check out this STRIKES mobile app, it provides intuitive analytics and notifies of many pitfalls to your options positions:

https://www.trystrikes.com/

Titan seems to be mobile only for now

https://www.titan.com/

hey, thanks, checked them out, they seem to be a financial advisor, not a broker-dealer:

"We’re your investment team. Titan is a premier investment firm that manages over $500M for 30,000 clients."

Check out WeBull. Their macOS native app is very good. Nearly a Bloomberg terminal. Real time quotes, amazing charts, and data feeds with news. Zero commission trades and options.

Shameless referral link if you feeling it (both get rewards).

https://act.webull.com/po/Waj6YqDt8arm/6dy/inviteUs/pop

I haven’t really investigated it too hard. I use Robinhood because it has 0 fees for stocks, options, and crypto (but I’ve mostly moved on to an exchange that lets me withdraw crypto). I also use Robinhood because it has 2.5% interest for margin (with 6% interest on the first $1000, counting the $5/month Robinhood Gold fee). And also, instant deposits.

I’ve found the UI to be pretty poor in some respects.

Thanks, the issue with Robinhood imo is that their price execution is quite poor and you pay extra on the bid-ask spread.. kind of a hidden fee in a way.

Plus they don't have any relevant tools that would help to make a well-informed decision.

Robinhood is for unsavy traders lured in by (false) advertising for saving money on trading. While they advertise no fees for trading, their poor execution means you get pricing that's far worse than normal trading fees.

I am pretty sure it does not mean that you get a price that’s “far” worse. You would need to quantify such a claim — a number I see from the SEC comes down to $1 per user (as a _lower_ bound on total extra cost, weakening my argument).

I’m not a day trader — almost all my money is in long term held stocks and crypto — so margin interest rate is all that matters. (For options, I don’t think I suffered any execution issues, because it almost always has involved a limit order in a low volume option.)

IMO the main disadvantage of Robinhood is not their execution quality (which is relatively low) but complete absence of any helpful tools to make a well-informed decision.

You cannot easily see what options are over or under-priced IV-wise. It also does not notify of any important events that might affect your options positions.

For example, when someone owns a deep ITM call and ex-dividend date is approaching, it might make sense to exercise that call and buy an identical OTM put. But most retail traders are unaware of such technicalities and therefore in the long run sustain losses caused primarily by such basic mistakes..

I totally agree with this, though I have to wonder how many retail options traders with advanced features are really making money.

I really like Trade Republic. Native iOS & Android App, only 1€ fee per transaction, many Stocks, Derivatives and even Crypto. However, it's only available in Germany, Austria and France.

Thank you for sharing your experience.

My sister's family actually lives in Germany so they are somewhat familiar with the US retail brokerages and in turn I am familiar with the German ones, namely Trade Republic and flatex, only 2 to choose from :)

So regarding trading stocks on Trade Republic, you get a super wide bid-ask spread that is unheard of in the US.. They route their trades through a Hamburg-based market maker called Lang & Schwarz, and try to make as much as they can on stocks(!) PFOF.

Regarding the derivatives, they don't offer options at all!! What they do offer is called "optionsscheine" which is not an option but a warrant, created by some investment bank like Deutsche or Commerz. Apart from a very real counterparty risk compared to options, they are quite expensive. And yes, you cannot "go short" with this optionsscheine, only long. So no verticals or diagonal option trades. Below is the link if someone wants to learn more about investing in these "optionsscheine":

https://www.globalinvestorgroup.com/articles/3695830/europea...

Please, don't get me wrong, I am not mocking Germany and I do respect German ppl, I just think that retail brokerages there suck bigly due to the lack of competition and a severe red tape. Would be glad to hear your counter-arguments.

Don't really use it for trading, but TradingView has top notch charting and their screener ain't half bad either.

thanks! what charting do they offer? anything options-related (like implied volatility charts)?

Desktop Trading: TDAmeritrade.

Mobile Trading: E-Trade.

thx, why don't you use the same broker for desktop and mobile? E-trade has very limited options analytics on its mobile app so a bit surprised..

I really love Alpaca. You can use their TradingView integration as a no-code solution.

Public.com - it’s fun.

Thx, what aspects of their service do you find the most attractive?

I recently listened to the podcast of their CEO https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmalling/ He sounded rather elitist to be honest.. Like everyday ppl are just not intelligent enough to trade options, etc. So that was a bit off-putting.

tastyworks

heard mostly positive feedback on them, it's a shame though tastyworks don't disclose their execution quality and price improvement for the end-user like Fidelity and Charles Schwab do.. even robinhood does that.

the other concern about Tastyworks is that they have been recently acquired by IG Group (UK CFD provider) and might get greedy with the price improvement suffering. IG's poor fill quality is their modus operandi in the UK..

Interactive Brokers, great execution quality, normally use their desktop version since find their mobile app somewhat cumbersome..

P.S. Oliver, is that really you? How was your space flight? :) Btw your comment is "dead" so you should contact the admin to fix that.

thx, have u tried mobile-only brokers like Webull or RH?

Webull isn't mobile only.

thanks, good point

Nor is Robinhood!

How do you gauge the execution quality?

there are certain parameters like net price improvement, percentage of improved orders and execution speed.. retail brokerages are encourage to make such data public by FINRA:

1. https://robinhood.com/us/en/about-us/our-execution-quality/

2. https://www.schwab.com/execution-quality

3. https://clearingcustody.fidelity.com/app/item/RD_13569_21687...

Seconding IBKR. In addition to execution and algo orders etc they have excellent margin facilities, every live feed imaginable and good fee structure for algorithmic and/or day trading. The desktop app takes some getting used to and the Java API might not be everyone's cup of tea it's fast and reliable and provides per-tick historical data which is crucial for backtesting.

The typical answers are TD Ameritrade, Interactive Brokers, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and eTrade. Note that CS and TD are merging but their products and accounts remain separate for now and they will merge those over the next few years. Robinhood, webull, etc are the newcomers that are popular in a memestocks sort of way, but aren’t actually better. Robinhood does give you access to IPOs that you can’t get elsewhere if you’re into that kind of risk. If you’re a casual investor though, the nuanced differences between these platforms won’t matter as much for you.

Robinhood hands down!! To the Moon!

Before moving to the US I used to trade via Degiro (Dutch local brokerage), there is no much choice in the Netherlands.. US is the land of opportunities like space conquest and commission-free trading :)

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