Don’t Sign Up For TradeKing, Yet

TradeKing offers a low $4.95 per trade, lowest I’ve come across and I used to highly recommend it. But right now, I don’t I still recommend TradeKing. Not that the quality of the company has gone down, it’s just that they’re in the process of making some changes within the company, mainly their clear firm. Clear firm is a type of company that handles all the brokerage firms process and settle trades, process fund movements, and are responsible for holding customer shares and other assets. They expect a full conversion to their new clear firm by end of the 3rd quarter this year, meaning sometime during the summer. If you sign up for TradeKing today, you will most likely end up doing the application process all over again when the conversion to the new clear firm is complete. So, to avoid any confusion with additional paperwork required, I’d say hold off on signing up for TradeKing.

**Update (June 22, 2010) – I have communicated with TradeKing and they have assured me that there would be no interruption in all TradeKing accounts, even if you sign up for a brand new account prior to the completion of the clearing firm transition. So, I still highly recommend TradeKing over other online brokerage companies. Sign up for TradeKing now at

Alternatively, there are plenty of other online brokerage firms that competes well with TradeKing.