Broker, Commissions, and Fees, Oh My.

In the mail today was an An that said "TradeStation the world's most powerful trading platform is now free for active traders."

I always like to look at any ad that has to do with futures or stocks.

The ad goes on to say "if you trade at least 25,000 shares, 100 options, or 50 round-turn Futures contracts, or 25 round-turn Forex lots per month you get TradeStation for free that month."

The part I always look for is to see if they print their commissions which this ad did.

"With our deep discount commissions, you're likely to save money on every trade too.... Futures $2.50 "

Then in very tiny print it says "per side."

This brings up mixed feeling for me, on one hand I am happy to see them print a number but on the other hand I don't trust what they say.

From dealing with brokers for many years I have found out that you really don't know what they are going to charge you until you get your statement.

Sometimes even that does not tell the whole story and you have to wait for several statements to really figure out what is going on.

Like the time I thought I was getting a great commission only to find out my account had a quarterly fee that they must have forgotten to tell me about, that didn't show up until the third monthly statement.

Back to the ad... This ad gives you the trade requirement in round-turns but the commission is per side, so you have to double the per side rate to get the commission on a round-turn.

That's a little sneaky, but probably not where they will get you (if they are), I have never traded with TradeStation so I don't know their policy, I only know about the couple dozen other places I have traded.

At the bottom of the page in fine print it says, exchange fees are not included. In case you don't know, that's where they get you with the fees and other charges, they have so many names for everything they can tack onto your trades it's not funny.

Even the times I have talked to a broker and said "ok, I want to know exactly to the penny everything that will show up on my statement... I don't want any surprises, I want to know all the fees, commissions, charges, account charges, quarterly charges, account fees, transaction fees, brokerage charges, regulatory fees, other fees, and other commissions"

Then they say "well it depends."

So then I say " ok, suppose I open an account with 10k, I place 1 trade to buy 1 contract of corn at the market, then I do nothing for 3 months, what is the total amount of money that will still be in my account, not counting margin, or open equity?"

If you continue asking these questions then about 1 out of 3 will give you an honest answer.

The other 2 will try and get you to believe that you will be charged less than what you will actually be charged.

The bottom line is your probably not going to know exactly what your going to be paying until you start getting your statements, but ask anyway.