E*Trade was one of the first online trading service that paved the road for many of the online brokers. Their diverse selection of investments and wide range of services make E*Trade appealing to both the casual investor and trader.

E*Trade has a tiered pricing schedule that will work in your favor if you have $50,000 in investment assets or make more than 1,500 trades per quarter. Unlike many of the other online traders, they charge a $40/quarter maintenance fee if you have less than $10,000 in assets. If you don’t yet have large account or don’t trade a lot, this probably isn’t the service for you, since the best deals are for those that trade often or have a large account balance.

Fees/Commissions        

This broker has the following tiered commissions schedule: If you make more than 150 trades/quarter you pay $7.99 per trade, if you do less than 150 trades/quarter you pay $9.99 per trade. The same pricing goes for options trades as well. They also charge commissions for global trading and broker assited trading.

Additionally there is a quarterly $40 maintenance fee for accounts with less than $10,000.

Investments Offered        

E*Trade makes it easy to find the right investments you need to diversify your portfolio. They offer all of the basic investments like stocks, bonds, mutual funds and exchange–traded funds. They also offer an array of fixed income investments.

Ease of Use        

The website has step–by–step tutorials that explain the purpose of different types of orders and how to request the orders from the desktop. These are very useful and informative for the new trader and will help the seasoned trader freshen up on some terms and discover new orders.

Trading/Investment Tools        

With a fully customizable trading interface, E*Trade gives you maximum control over your trades. They offer a number of automated trading features including trailing stops, hidden stops, contingents and bracketed trades.

You’ll also find valuable educational resources and tools including articles, calculators, retirement planning and a tax center.

They now have an app for Blackberry’s called Mobile Pro, that can be used to view real-time quotes and watch lists, for stock and options trading and cash transfers. The app works especially well with the technology of the Blackberry Bold.

Support/Customer Service        

E*Trade has 20 brick and mortar centers around the nation. There are a number of E*Trade Centers in California with some others in selected states: Arizona, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Texas and Washington.

You can contact customer support by phone or email, but they don’t have live chat. We liked that their securities phone line is available 24 hours a day.

Summary

E*Trade was founded in 1982. With over 20 years of experience, this broker knows online stock trading. The only downside is the steeper fees.