Charles Schwab is a good place to start if you are looking for the whole investment package, from traditional banking features to online stock trading services to retirement options. They offer a decent price for frequent traders and more no-load mutual funds than most services.

We liked that they have around 300 offices for personal visits and deposits and that they provide 24/7 support for nearly all services.

Fees/Commissions        

Charles Schwab has a tiered commission schedule, based on your balance or number of trades per year. If you trade over 120 trades per year or you have a balance of over one million they charge $8.95 per online trade, if you execute fewer than 120 trades per year the fee is $12.95. Online option trades are $8.95 plus $.075 per contract, which is a pretty competitive rate.

Margin rates are tiered based on balance from base plus 2% to base plus .50%. Overall, these rates are not bad, however, if you are a really active stock trader and know what you are doing, other services like TradeKing and MB Trading offer lower trade rates.

Investments Offered        

You can invest your money in just about anything through this online broker. The basic investments include stocks, options, mutual funds, futures and exchange–traded funds. They offer all of the fixed income investments we looked for including bonds, treasury issues, CDs and more. They offer an impressive 2,000 no-load mutual funds, annuities, money market funds and margin loans. They also provide trading access to non-U.S. securities and ADRs, WEBs and Canadian foreign orders.

Ease of Use        

Charles Schwab trading platform includes all of the tools you would expect for this type of software, and it is fairly easy to use, provided that you know what you are looking at. However, new traders may be a bit confused by the trading tools and will need to do a little studying before they can fully utilize the powerful trading tools.

Trading/Investment Tools        

Charles Schwab offers a customizable desktop with alerts, level I quotes, level II quotes, option chains, screeners, watch lists, charts and graphs and much more. They also offer the educational resources so you can make wise investments. Some of these resources include streaming news, analyst research reports, including daily and weekly market commentary from Market Edge®. You can also attend live online workshops to further your knowledge of investing. These workshops cover many diverse topics and are frequently held. We hope that they add a cell phone app soon, so day traders can trade from anywhere.

Support/Customer Service        

Schwab has about 300 offices nationwide to assist you in your investing needs. You can also contact a representative by phone or email. We really liked that most departments including brokerage, active trader and new client services are available 24/7.

Summary

Charles Schwab provides an all-inclusive investment package, which is suitable for frequent traders or long-term retirement investors. We also commend them on providing 24/7 support and their numerous seminars for new and experience traders.