Best Brokers for Day Trading 2019

When choosing an online broker, day traders place a premium on speed, reliability, and low cost. Features designed to appeal to long-term infrequent traders are unnecessary for day traders, who generally start a trading day with no positions in their portfolios, make a lot of transactions, and end the day having closed all of those trades. Here are our top brokers for day trading:

• Interactive Brokers
• Lightspeed
• TradeStation
• TD Ameritrade
• tastyworks

Day traders may place their trades manually, often from a chart, or set up an automated system which generates orders on their behalf. Fundamental data is not a concern, but the ability to monitor price volatility, liquidity, trading volume, and breaking news is key. 

Day traders often prefer brokers who charge per share (rather than per trade). They also need real-time margin and buying power updates. Each broker ranked here affords their day-trading customers the ability to enter orders very quickly by customizing the size of trades and turning off the trade confirmation screen. We sought brokers who allow traders to place multiple orders simultaneously, designate which trading venue will handle the order, and customize trading defaults.

This ranking focuses on online brokers and does not consider proprietary trading shops. 

The longtime leader in low-cost trading, Interactive Brokers is geared for very active traders. Though they have been adding features for less frequent traders over the last few years, their priority is keeping fees down. The speedy downloadable platform, Trader Workstation (TWS), includes dozens of professional-grade trading algorithms, such as the Adaptive Algo, which finds better prices for filling orders. You can customize the algorithm to fill your market order at the midpoint between bid and ask, thereby seeking opportunities within the spread to chisel a fraction of a penny more for your profits.

IB’s margin rates are practically the lowest you will find, especially for traders who use more than $100,000 of margin. You can automate a trading strategy using an API plug-in, or by subscribing to a strategy on their Investors’ Marketplace.

Interactive Brokers also received awards for Best Overall Online Brokers, Best for International Trading, Best for Low Costs, Best for Options Trading and Best for Penny Stocks.

Lightspeed Trader, the downloadable platform for day traders, is exceptionally stable, having had no issues weathering the many trading surges of the last few years. It’s customizable and includes streaming real-time quotes on all of the assets you can trade. The charts display and update rapidly and let you apply technical studies and Level II quotes, among other powerful features. 

Lightspeed Trader is highly secure. The login process includes a virtual private network (VPN), especially crucial for those with wireless Internet connections. A soft token is offered for those who use the web platform. Customers can set up complex order entry defaults which can be invoked with hotkeys to expedite orders. Frequent options traders can use the LivevolX platform.

Lightspeed also received awards for Best for Low Costs and Best for Options Trading.

TradeStation’s downloadable trading platform is packed with features for frequent traders. The platform originated as a technical analysis and charting package, evolving into a brokerage in 2001. You can route your orders yourself, selecting a trading venue, or use TradeStation’s smart order routing engine.

One of the strengths of this broker is the ability to build, backtest, and deploy an automated trading strategy based on technical triggers. The streaming real-time data is clean, so your strategies don’t send trades to market based on an erroneous feed. The TradingApp Store features in-house and third-party tools, many of which are free, to add to your platform. The web-based and mobile platforms are synched to the desktop platform, and offer extensive charting capabilities.

TradeStation also received awards for Best Overall Online Brokers and Best for Penny Stocks.

The thinkorswim platform from TD Ameritrade provides customers with dazzling charting tools which can be customized to your heart’s content. Streaming real-time quotes power the intra-day charts, and you can send orders from a chart with a mouse click. To follow multiple stocks, simply tile charts on your monitor. If you want to automate a trading strategy, the thinkScript language allows you to use one of 300 built-in strategies, or set up your own from the hundreds of technical indicators included in the platform. The trading simulator, paperMoney, lets you work out your strategies without risking money. 

TD Ameritrade also received awards for Best Overall Online Brokers, Best for Options Trading, Best Web Trading Platforms, Best for Beginners, Best for ETFs, Best for Roth IRAs, Best for IRAs and Best Stock Trading Apps.

Tastyworks is a fast, reliable platform focused on options analysis and trading, but there are also plenty of tools for stock/ETF traders. The dashboard layout is easily customizable. Unlike other brokers, the browser platform has almost every feature as the downloadable one -- key for those who aren’t always at home base. Even the mobile apps are power-packed. 

The tools are designed for people who visualize prospective trades rather than following a flow of time and sales data. They focus on liquidity, volatility, and the probability of a profit. On quote pages, implied volatility appears before a quote in order to help customers understand market opportunity.

Tastyworks also received awards for Best for Low Costs, and Best for Options Trading. 

A key consideration for day traders is trading platform quality, which can impact things such as execution speed and price quotes. Day traders, especially those who trade using their own algorithms, need flawless data feeds, or they risk entering orders based on errors in the data. In an environment where high-frequency traders placing transactions in milliseconds, human traders must possess the best tools. Most brokers offer speedy trade executions, but slippage remains a concern. Traders should test for themselves how long a platform takes to execute a trade.

Commissions, margin rates, and other expenses are also top concerns for day traders. Even if a day trader can consistently beat the market, the profit from those positions must exceed the cost of commissions, and for a high volume trader, commission costs can easily run into the hundreds or thousands of dollars per day. Traders can check these rates by contacting the broker or checking the broker website, but most offer special rates for highly active day traders.

It’s also important for day traders to consider factors like customer service and the broker’s financial stability. Customer service plays a key role during times of crisis – such as a computer crash or other failure when you need to reach support to place a trade. The best brokers offer dedicated account representatives for highly active day traders to assist in this regard. 

The financial strength of the firm is also important since small brokerages can and do go out of business, but the main player in whether or not you can recover your assets is the clearing firm. Take a look at FINRA's BrokerCheck page before signing on with a small firm, to make sure they haven't had claims filed against them for misdeeds or financial instability.