Trading Nasdaq Again - Broker Choices

[OoieGooie]

Hi There,

To keep things brief, I'm currently looking for a broker to trade ETF's on the Nasdaq again and could use some advice.

I've dabbled in trading already and I am very much a learner still. Unfortunately I find a lot of false information out there and I've paid for listening to it. I figured I might as well create a thread and explain things my way to try and find a solution.

My first choice was Interactive Brokers. Everyone overseas and in Oz advised me to go with them. Even IB support advised me I could trade Nasdaq. Well, $500 in fees later it turns out I couldn't. I tried to trade only to have big red text tell me otherwise. Support advised me at that point "no, overseas clients can't trade USD". Great start!! I think this was around 2014. How the hell are Aussies trading USD with them?! P.S. Support was very rude.

2nd choice was Suretrader. Even now I am trying to sign up but I am having issues filling in their forms. I tried years ago with similar issues and frankly I don't want to use them. I've heard nothing but bad things however they bypass the PDT* rule and thats something I'd like to avoid if possible.

3rd and final was Options Express. I had my time with them and it worked fine for my needs but the platform and tools are not very good. My account seems to have expired (or their password reset tool is broken) as I can no longer log in. Their support is not being helpful here. Fee's were ok though and I had no issues transferring money. Overall a good experience but they have the PDT rule.

Right now I see two options. Keep at it with Suretrader, pay lots of fees or..
Join back up with Options Express but put half+ my savings into them to avoid the PDT rule.

*This might sound bad but I feel like the US economy could die a big fat death and any savings I put with a broker could be lost. This is why I was looking at Suretrader (less loss) and I could try to invest in other ways with the rest of my savings.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully someone has 2 cents on a broker I could use and why. Cheers.

 

[minwa]

If you couldn't trade QQQ's on IB it was probably trading permissions issue, and support was probably testing/didn't bother with ya if you couldn't figure that out, they are not beginner friendly. No offence - they cater to more experienced crowd. If you can get it working it's the obvious winner with rates against the other 2.

Can't comment about security of deposits.

Out of curiosity what did you drop $500 on ?

 

[OoieGooie]

If you couldn't trade QQQ's on IB it was probably trading permissions issue, and support was probably testing/didn't bother with ya if you couldn't figure that out, they are not beginner friendly. No offence - they cater to more experienced crowd. If you can get it working it's the obvious winner with rates against the other 2.

Can't comment about security of deposits.

Out of curiosity what did you drop $500 on ?

The loss of $500+ was transferring funds to IB.

The error was in regards to going long on a $11 stock (NASDAQ). I went into detail on what I wanted and they simply lied to me. I did the same thing with OX with no issues and after I asked them the same questions. I did run into other permission issues later but it was at least sorted professionally. IB have or had terrible support. Hopefully its now changed.

 

[minwa]

Well something definitely went wrong with your fund transfers. I deposit and withdraw regularly with no fees.

Crap support agreed. Tradeoff for paying a fraction of the cost.