TD Ameritrade Review 2019

The broker that offers an electronic trading platform for the trade of financial assets. Many Investors use this broker. But what exactly is TD Ameritrade?

Stock price: AMTD (NASDAQ)

Headquarters: Omaha, Nebraska, United States

Founder: Joe Ricketts

Subsidiaries: Thinkorswim, TD AMERITRADE IP Co Inc

Executives: Tim Hockey (CEO, President)

TD Ameritrade is one of the largest online trading platforms. The company trades in financial assets, including:

• common stocks
• preferred stocks
• futures contracts
• exchange-traded funds
• options
• cryptocurrency
• mutual funds
• fixed-income investments

TD Ameritrade also provides margin lending and cash management services. The company is based in Omaha, Nebraska, with major trading centers in Southlake, Texas, and St Louis, Missouri. Moreover, one has several platforms to choose from the range of their essential website to thinkorswim, which is designed for very active traders.

How Does TD Ameritrade Work?

TD Ameritrade operates since 1975. And since then, the company has over a million customers. Moreover, the company is home to over a trillion dollars of customer assets. TD Ameritrade charges a higher commission per trade deal compared to most other trading platforms.

However, reviews conducted by international agencies on performance parameters rank them as one of the best trading platforms. Investors prefer TD Ameritrade due to their extensive research capabilities, education offerings on investments, and multiple support channels.

Example

For example, one of these support channels is thinkorswim. Thinkorswim is an extremely advanced application streaming dozens of real-time data charts. Also, each study can be customized using their propriety coding language thinkscript.

Moreover, TD Ameritrade is a web-based platform. It offers a wide range of account options such as Individual, Joint Tenants WROS (With Rights of Survivorship), Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, Rollover IRA, Trust, and UTMA/UGMA.

Also, TD Ameritrade offers a wide range of investment choices, educational resources, and diverse trading platforms. Once an account is open and funded, investment in pretty much anything such as significant stock, bond, mutual fund, and other investment markets is available.

Education Resources Provided by TD Ameritrade

TD Ameritrade provides extensive online information on investment opportunities. The company also provides options that are customized to fit the customer’s investment interests and goals. All of which with the help of the vast library of online content.

Moreover, TD Ameritrade provides a fully immersive curriculum provided by coaches who hold real experience of several years in this field. They can guide the customer effectively regarding a range of investing and trading topics to empower them as knowledgeable investors. The courses are easy to access and follow.

Robust Catalog

Most importantly, they are full of useful information. They provide a robust catalog of more than 200 instructional videos, tutorials, and investing publications. Further, users can use the numerous available informative webcast to find information about active and experienced traders.

The best part is that everything is in one place. Investors can choose from a variety of education onboarding, long-term investing, active trading, portfolio management, and complimentary market webcasts.

Given TD Ameritrade’s vast trade network coverage, they also conduct several in-person events. For example, seminars and conferences on trading and investing. They also provide the immense potential to customers to grow as investors and network with others at these in-depth educational platforms. These platforms can help investors with unparalleled strategy tips about market events from various industry pros.

Further, TD Ameritrade is also active on several social networking platforms. They are starting from Alexa to Facebook and even on Twitter. Investors can post a question or seek clarification from the customer support option on their official website.

And they would reply real quick given the strong team of qualified people working on answering customer queries. With such active 24/7 customer service, users sure would feel right at home. Thanks to its broad network coverage and a unique line-up of tools to empower customers with investment knowledge.

Ameritrade’s Research Resources

TD Ameritrade also provides substantial research offerings to its customers. For example:

TD Ameritrade’s live streaming financial network – It broadcasts live every day from 8:00 ET to 5:00 ET. The live streaming financial network includes an excellent mix of market analysis as well as trader education.

TD Ameritrade also provides written daily market commentary – They also offer analysis through The Ticker Tape covering subjects of general finance, savings, retirement and trader education.

TD Ameritrade’s website also includes unique tools – Social Signals, for example, displays a real-time streaming feed of algorithmically filtered and brand-relevant tweets.

There is also an easy-to-use Income Estimator tool for investors – It is for investors who have multiple holdings paying dividends. This tool helps them view a complete income breakdown.

Thus, looking at its functionality, TD Ameritrade can be labeled as one of the best online trading and investment companies. They also have the most tech-focused mobile tools. The company has two smartphone apps to its credit:

• TD Ameritrade Mobile – designed for casual investors
• TD Ameritrade Mobile Trader – designed for active traders

Pricing and Fees | TD Ameritrade

According to a review conducted this year, one major complaint from investors is the pricing and fees of the company. Customers find them to be substantially high. Frequent traders or those with high account balances can negotiate their own rates up to a certain extent.

However, the standard pricing is on the high side in the current marketplace.

• $6.95 for a stock or ETF trade
• $6.95 per leg plus $0.75 for options

Though these prices include all exchange fees, margin rates are still considered quite high. Due to an industry price war in 2017, commission rates have been lower than they were a few years ago. Still, trading is more expensive than most other brokers.

TD Ameritrade’s Customer service

TD Ameritrade provides one of the most satisfying trading experience to its traders and investors. Why?

Due to the tools available at the investors’ disposal and the number of platforms the customers can use for research and trading. Also, the performance indicators are divided into various categories to provide feedback on their services. For example:

Trading experience – Trading experience is marked considerably satisfactory. The downloadable thinkorswim platform, for example, with its sufficiently easy-to-access interface, provides numerous customization options, allowing users to define color schemes, layouts, and trading defaults.

Trading technology – In this too, the ratings received are quite high. One can find real-time streaming data on all platforms.

Usability – The software development team remains proactive in providing customers in building a unified set of services.  Clients are starting to see a more standard look and feel across platforms.

All technology features advanced build-up. Moreover, it is responsive to the device the client uses, be it tablets or smartphones.

Range of offerings – It is sufficiently widespread in its sector for offering over 300 ETFs commission-free, as well as over 12,000 mutual funds.

News and Research – The news and research sector is sufficiently broad and informative. It offers a wide array of tools. Moreover, it enables the customers to scan for trading opportunities using real-time data equities and options.

Customer Service and Help – TD Ameritrade is on several social media platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Twitter, WeChat, Amazon’s Alexa, and Apple Business Chat. However, the company provides instant support to clients’ questions and directs them to the content on their website.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Availing the Services of TD Ameritrade: an Assessment

An overall glance makes one realize that the advantages of resorting to Ameritrade’s services definitely outweigh its cons. Extensive research facilities, education offerings, and additional support channels. They all provide active support to TD Ameritrade’s’ clients in maintaining healthy trade and investment jobs.

Currently, its pricing is hefty. However, with other brokers, clients may have to use more than one trading system to find all the tools they want to use.