Sunday, October 15, 2006

INVESTools + thinkorswim

Anyone out there using INVESTools? What are your thoughts about it? I saw a piece in the latest Barron's about www.thinkorswim.com being purchased by INVESTools. Sounds like a good deal to me. A former co-worker of mine was relating very positive experiences about using INVESTools, and now they have an online brokerage component they can integrate with their educational tools.

Speaking of thinkorswim, do any readers out there use them? If so, what has been your experience with them? What kind of securities can you trade with them? Using Barron's review of online brokers from earlier this year, optionsXpress seemed to have a slightly richer offering on the web-based platform side. This new pairing looks promising from an education + trading perspective. But I need a broker with whom I can trade equity and futures options, and I don't see mention of options on futures on their site. From my read, they only offer trading on index futures. Reader thoughts on the quality of thinkorswim's offerings are much appreciated.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thinkorswim is entirely focused on options, and very little on ETF's or stocks, although they can be easily traded on the platform. However, if you are just trading these, stick with someone like OX. Although I don't use the online version of TOS, I use the software (which is free to download) and it is 10 to 20 times better than OptionsXpress, whom I used previously. If you are a serious trader, TOS's software is by far the best platform I have ever seen, and I highly recomend it over every other broker out there

Anonymous said...

OptionsXpress on steriods! ;-)

Anonymous said...

I had been looking for a vechicle(plan) for several years to make it easy for me to understand and invest in the stock market. I had read many books. The best one was Rule # 1 by Phil Town. I purchsed it in August,06.

I have an account with Fidelity and I really wanted to know more. I was even watching Cramer on Mad Money. Then I saw an informerical on TV about Investools and went to the 2 hr sales show. They were very good, so I signed up. I was ready to get started. I'll have to admit I felt a little buyers remorse when I left them my money.

That was in September,06. I travel a lot so I could not go to the class till December,06. Without attending the first class, I started from what they showed in the basic opening and the site information and plowed right in. I have doubled my investment and am loving the courses and the support. The best money I have spent in a long time. I went with the Masters course and it has paid for inself many times over. I guess the best way to put it, they made so a cave man could do it.
Thank You Very Much.
They made is so easy for me anyway, I'm 60.