TradeStation is a popular stock portfolio tracking app for long-term investors, experienced investors, and day traders. Founded in 1982, TradeStation is regulated by FINRA and the SEC, so your investments are safe. Accounts are insured for up to $500,000.
The TradeStation trading platform makes it easy to track all your positions, orders, and investment account activity in one place. Get real-time data on stocks, ETFs, options, futures, etc.
Analyze your holdings and trading performance with their charting and scanning tools. Set price alerts, review your trade history, and generate reports to optimize your strategy. But is it the best stock portfolio tracking app? Here is a detailed TradeStation review to determine if it is.
TradeStation Trading Products
TradeStation offers a powerful platform for trading stocks, ETFs, options, futures, and IPOs. Their investing tools provide advanced analytics and data to help you make informed trading decisions.
- Stocks: TradeStation offers real-time data packages and historical stock data to help you analyze the market. You’ll have access to charts, fundamental indicators, and trading tools to find promising individual stock opportunities.
- ETFs: TradeStation allows you to choose from over 2,000 ETFs to invest in entire market sectors or indexes. Their stock screener helps you evaluate different ETFs based on criteria like performance, expenses, and holdings.
- Options: Options traders will appreciate TradeStation’s options chains, position graphs, and educational resources. Whether you’re a beginner trader, beginner investor or advanced trader, you’ll have the tools to analyze potential options strategies.
- Futures: TradeStation provides futures traders with historical data, contract specifications, and integrated charting platforms. You can backtest your futures trading strategies before putting real money on the line. TradeStation acts as a brokerage account for a variety of futures products.
- IPOs: Don’t miss out on the next hot IPO. TradeStation offers IPO watchlists, notifications and access to IPO stocks so you can get in on the ground floor of new public companies.
TradeStation’s Key Features
Once you start using TradeStation, you’ll quickly discover several unique features that set it apart from other stock tracking apps.
- RadarScreen®: TradeStation’s proprietary market monitoring tool, RadarScreen®, allows you to scan and rank up to 1,000 stocks in real-time based on whatever criteria are most important to you – like technical indicators, fundamentals, or custom factors.
- Matrix: The Matrix is TradeStation’s versatile order entry and management tool. It gives you an at-a-glance view of market depth and allows you to place orders, track your positions, and make changes all in one window.
- Advanced Order Types: TradeStation supports a wide range of advanced order types beyond just market and limit orders. You have access to bracket orders, trailing stops, and One-Cancels-Other (OCO) orders, which help you manage risk in your positions.
- Strategy Backtesting: Before implementing a new trading strategy, you can backtest it using historical market data in TradeStation. This allows you to see how your investment strategies would have performed in the past and determine if it’s effective before putting real money on the line.
- Education Resources: TradeStation is deeply committed to educating and empowering traders. They offer a wealth of resources like webinars, articles, video tutorials, and an entire learning center on their website.
- Developer Center and API Access: TradeStation allows developers to create custom tools and apps that integrate with their platform. This means you can customize TradeStation to better suit your workflow.
- Top-Notch Customer Support: TradeStation is renowned for providing high-quality customer service and support. They offer phone support 24 hours a day and email and live chat support.
Fees and Expenses
When considering TradeStation as your stock trading app, it’s important to understand its fee structure. TradeStation offers competitive pricing, with $0 commission trades on stocks and ETFs, as well as reasonable fees for options and futures options trading. However, some charges apply for specific services.
Account Fees
TradeStation has no monthly platform or data fees. They do have inactivity fees of $99.95 per year if you don’t place any trades for 12 months. Certain account types, like IRAs, may require a minimum balance to avoid fees. For example, their most basic account requires a $500 minimum initial deposit.
Trading Fees
Stock and ETF trades are commission-free. Options trades are $0.50 to $0.70 per contract. Futures trades are around $1.50 per contract. Mutual fund trades cost $20 to $40, depending on the fund. Margin rates are also competitive, starting at 7.75% for loan amounts over $100,000.
Promotions
With a minimum opening deposit of $500, you’ll receive an extra $150 cash credit. They frequently run other promotions offering free trades, cash back, or account bonuses. Check their website for current offers.
Additional services
TradeStation charges for certain add-on services like paper trading accounts, market data subscriptions, and Level 2 quotes. Wire transfers in or out of your account cost $25 each.
Is TradeStation the Best Stock Portfolio Tracking App?
When it comes to tracking your investment portfolio and executing trades, TradeStation is a popular choice for active investors and traders. With its sophisticated yet intuitive interface, competitive pricing, and advanced tools, TradeStation provides an all-in-one solution for monitoring the markets and managing your positions.
TradeStation isn’t the cheapest platform, but for active traders, the costs can be well worth it. Pricing starts at $5 per trade for stocks and ETFs. There are no inactivity fees, account minimums or software fees. TradeStation often runs promotions offering commission-free stock and ETF trading for new accounts. To get started on TradeStation, click here.