Penny stocks can be lucrative if you know what you’re doing and the best apps can help with this – here is a great list.
1. Best No-Fee Trading App: Robinhood
Whenever you are trading penny stocks, the margins and fees are more important compared to when trading larger stocks – since each share has a low value, a large fee will take a bigger percentage of your trades. This is why Robinhood, which doesn’t charge any commissions or fees on stock trades, offers the best value for stock trades, especially low-cost stocks.
Note that over-the-counter stocks or Pink Sheets are not supported by Robinhood; it ties into the major exchanges only. That limits the amount of penny stock investment opportunities that are available, however, lack of fees cannot be beaten!
Even if another penny stock trading app has to be used for reaching the market’s farthest corners when Robinhood is added to the mix to save on the fees it makes lots of sense for a majority of the best penny stocks investors. Just make sure you are aware that at this point the app is only mobile – with no web interface available at this time.
2. Best Low Cost App: Interactive Brokers
Both fixed-rate plans with a per share flat rate and tiered plan with fees but lower commissions are offered by Interactive Brokers. For high volume traders, tiered plans are better, while for everyone else, fixed-rate plans are best.
With a fixed rate plan, you pay .005 cent per share and 0.5% maximum of trade value and minimum $1 per order. There are different rates on international shares. Depending on the way you trade, that could be less expensive compared to other brokers that are on the list (apart from Robinhood). However, Interactive Brokers offers many more trading options, making them more attractive depending on what your needs are.
If you trade penny stocks, then you may be interested in the broad range of various trading options from foreign exchange to commodities. More trading options are offered by Interactive Brokers compared to many other brokers, and it has a decent online trading platform as well.
3. Best Trading Platform App: TradeStation
There are $5 stock trades offered by TradeStation, which places it in the low-cost camp of brokerages. Beware that there are some fees that may add up in addition to the commissions. Also, a $5 monthly fee is charged that allows you to access OTC data. However, if you are willing to pay the fees, you will have access to a high-end mobile, desktop, and browser experience.
If you prefer not to pay the $5 flat rate trade fee, then you use the per share pricing that starts at one cent a share with unbundled pricing that is inexpensive as .002 cents per share. For frequent traders trading in small amounts of shares per-share pricing is the best, while for higher volume traders unbundled is better.
For 2017 Barrons ranked the desktop version #1. It works great directly out of the box and also integrates well with a broad range of trading apps and plugins. The desktop platform is available only for Windows 7 or higher. Mac is not supported unless you would like some complexity added with a tool such as Parallels Desktop, that allows you to run Windows apps on your Mac computer.
4. Best Traditional Brokerage App: Charles Schwab
A majority of the large online stock brokers provide you with access to a wide range of stocks, including famous ones like FANG (see more information here). Schwab stands out as being one of the leaders for low expenses, with just a $4.95 commission whenever you buy or sell. Although the fee is higher compared to free trading offered by Robinhood, Schwab provides you with access to some online pink sheet stocks and the Over the Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB).
Schwab’s customer service is highly rated, and in general, it is fairly easy to get in touch with a real human on the phone. It website dashboards and mobile app are updated on a regular basis with useful and new features.
Schwab is also well-known for the various trading platforms that it offers. It provides a mobile trading experience, web, and desktop application with some flexibility when it comes to configuration. StreetSmart Edge is their top-of-the-line option. It is a Windows desktop program (with the program’s Cloud edition working for users of all operating systems). For active traders, this is an absolute must.
5. Best Major Brokerage Platform App: TD Ameritrade
When it comes to major brokerages, the famous “thinkorsim” trading platform from TD Ameritrade provides high-level trading tools that resemble a Bloomberg terminal more than they do a consumer trading app. Twenty four hour trading is offered by Thinkorswim five days per week on eligible securities. That makes this trading experience a little more exciting.
Advanced trades are offered by Thinkorswim which includes OCO (one-cancels-the-other) and bracket trades. Tons of marketing monitoring tools, live news feeds, and technicals are offered by the platform.
TD America is one of the lower priced platforms, but isn’t the cheapest. For stocks trades are $6.95. If you don’t mind paying a bit more for this platform, then TD Ameritrade can be a good choice. If not, you may want to choose a less expensive platform in order to save a few dollars on your trades.
