Scottrade Review
0:09 UTC 17 Jan 2009 
7 Comments
Scottrade is a privately owned discount retail brokerage firm headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Its founder and president is Rodger O. Riney. Scottrade has more than 370 local branch offices. Scottrade was founded in 1980 by Riney as Scottsdale Securities in Scottsdale, Arizona, with two offices, one in Scottsdale and the other in St. Louis.
In 1996 Scottsdale Securities offered online trading to its customers, under the domain name of www.scottrade.com. It adopted the Scottrade name as its corporate name in 2000. http://www.scottrade.com
Scottrade was my first online broker and from the get go they made it very easy. I loved having the local office so that I felt comfortable handing my money over to someone instead of transferring online or mailing in a check to a random address. Although I don’t use Scottrade very much any more for my trades, I still use them for all of their easy to use tools, charts, and streaming quotes.
Below Im going to walk through some screen shots from my Scottrade account to better show the user interface and explain the pros and cons so that you can make a more informed decision.
First is a shot of the home page when you first log into your account.
I like the homepage with Scottrade in that it is very clean and uncomplicated. I have used other brokers where you get to your homepage and you have no idea whats going on because they are very cluttered.
The homepage has user friendly tabs for navigation. It shows up front your positions and a chart showing your performance over a customizable amount of time, which I like. Also shows your watchlist, which is customizable.
Next snapshot is of the streamer that comes free with your Scottrade account. You can find my comments in the green boxes on the picture.
The last snapshot is one showing more detail on an individual streaming chart.
As my comments in the snapshot mention the lack of indicators that you can add is a bummer, but if you don’t need all the extra indicators these tools will definitely do the trick. Scottrade does have all the additional tools and streaming indicators available to you if you carry an account of $25,000 or more with them. This platform is called Scottrade Elite. They probably figure that if you want all the extra tools you are probably day trading in which you would be required to carry a balance of $25,000 anyways. (FYI on any online brokerage account if you are deemed a “pattern day trader” you must meet the minimum requirements of $25,000 or you will get a margin call to make up any difference needed)
So in conclusion Scottrade is a great overall platform in my opinion. Very easy to use and the free streamer with streaming quotes is top notch for any beginning to intermediate trader. I still use my streamer with them just because it is so clean and doesn’t fill up my desktop like other streamers. Also the trades are easy to make in that they have the ability to “quick buy” right from the charts.
Leave your rating and any comments below on any experiences that you have had or other information that others may find valuable.
(13 votes, average: 3.69 out of 5)
Loading ...
Scottrade has great easy to use tools such as their charting tools and stock streamer that I use everyday.
Scottrade has always been reliable for me thats why i gave them 5 stars
Scottrade is solid for $7 a trade…. I like the fact that I can go to one of their offices down the street too. I have used their office for help and for money transfers.
The streaming quotes are good as well… which are included
Easy to understand screen, fast action on orders and great help desk. While 7 dollar cost per trade is not excessive, I would like to see a reduction to at least 5 dollars for active traders.
How can you beat an online broker that has a company helicopter in purple???!
I like Scottrade, but their interface is horrid. I find their positions report to be unbelievably bad–Yahoo! Finance gives me a more comprehensive quick view of my holdings. So does eTrade. I’ll stick with them because they don’t charge me an arm and a leg for everything under the sun, but I’d switch if eTrade’s fees were the same.
Scottrade, since their switch from Gainskeeper to a new company, had been unable to accurately reflect the purchase price of stocks in my portfolio. Ever since the switch, about 1 in 6 stocks reflect the wrong purchase price.
I contacted my local branch manager about a month ago and he stated “it’s a known problem and is being worked on”. For me however, this screams of incompetence and I’m moving my accounts.
Beware.