Best IRA Brokerage

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If you’re looking for a broker to manage your IRA then you’ve come to the right place. Finding the best IRA brokerage house can be a bit of a nightmare. There are hidden fees to consider as well as basic fees and commissions.

So we’ve searched through all the brokers we’ve reviewed over the past twelve months to find our number one IRA Brokerage. I’ll go through the process we went through to choose them and why they make the best IRA broker for you.

I’ll just point out that it’s unlikely that one broker will suit everybody’s needs. So this article takes the view that you want a broker purely to manage your IRA and you’re not interested in doing any other kind of trading like Forex for instance.

What we looked for

The perfect IRA broker will have low commissions, no hidden IRA management fees, no set-up fees and no expensive platform fees. Along with that they should offer good levels of support and excellent training.

Most people looking to manage an IRA are relatively new to trading so any training materials should be easy to follow and take into account all levels of experience. They should also not impose any minimum trade values or expensive platform fees.

You might think this is going to be hard to find in a single broker, but you’d be wrong. TradeKing offer all this and more.

Fees & Commissions

• Stocks and ETFs: $4.95 (for stocks/etfs priced over $1)
• Options: $4.95 plus $0.65 per contract (for up to 8 contracts) and $8.95 plus $0.15 per contract (for over 8 contracts)
• Mutual Funds: $9.95
• Bonds: $4.95/bond ($14.95 minimum)
• Treasuries: $24.95 per transaction
• Certificates of Deposit (CDs): $24.95 per transaction
• Minimum to open account: $0
• IRA Management Fee $0.00
• IRA Set-up Fee $0.00

Pros

• Some of the best commissions
• No minimums, maintenance or hidden fees
• Free real time quotes
• Award-winning trading tools
• Best rated customer service
• Low margin rates
• Best online investor community
• Fee-free IRAs
• Extensive educational resources

Cons

• Additional $0.01 per share on the entire order of stocks priced less than $1

Summary

It doesn’t matter if you’re new to trading or a seasoned investor TradeKing are an excellent choice for managing your IRA.

They have an excellent platform which is easy to use and doesn’t have any expensive platform fees; on top of that you’ll get access to one of the best trading communities on the web.

But the best thing about TradeKing form an IRA point of view is that they don’t charge any set-up or ongoing management fees. When you add to this, very reasonable trading costs you have a formidable combination.

Yes there are cheaper brokers around but they charge IRA set-up fees and in some cases expensive platform fees if you don’t trade above the account minimums.

When you take into account a typical IRA investor there is no doubt that TradeKing are the best choice, which is why we’ve voted them our number one IRA broker of 2011.

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