Trading Reviews Standards

We take our reviews seriously and hold every company to high standards. In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, there’s no reason to settle for a sub-par service. Whether you are choosing a broker or a trading platform, you have plenty of options, and we want to make sure you choose the best one. We evaluate each type of service based on the distinct features of it’s category. For example, brokers may be evaluated on commission pricing whereas chat rooms may be evaluated on the quality of their alerts. Having said that, we use a few basic criteria and standards to gauge the quality of all services reviewed.

Pricing

Pricing is a major factor when choosing a service. For example, a platform may be a steal at $50 but a ripoff at $300. We believe products pricing should be value-oriented. Cheaper isn’t always better. A broker that provides access to more valuable resources may be able to charge more than a broker with a basic offering.

Quality

We hold all companies accountable for the quality of the service they offer. Quality can take on different meanings in different contexts. A platform may be considered high-quality if it runs efficiently and provides all of the features you’d expect from a tool of that nature. A chat room may be considered high-quality if they provide actionable insights and valuable education.

Ease of Use

The world’s best service holds little value if you don’t know how to use it. We believe that service providers should take the time to make their platforms and offerings easy to use. We understand that the market can be complex, but still believe that it is the role of a service provider to create intuitive offerings. For example, using the VWAP indicator may not be easy, but adding a VWAP indicator to your charting platform should be.

Customer Service

It’s important to know you can trust a company, especially when you’re trusting them with your money. Whether a company has a direct or indirect impact on your capital, it’s important to make sure you are in good hands. You trust your broker to provide portfolio transparency just like you trust your platform to allow you to execute your trading plan. Of course, things won’t always go 100% as planned, so it’s important to make sure a company has good service. If you can’t place trades or get your platform to load, you don’t want to wait days for a response from a company’s support team. Accordingly, we gauge all company’s customer service as a part of our evaluation.

Effectiveness

Last but not least, we judge a service on its effectiveness. A service may be decently priced, high quality, easy to use, and backed by a good support team, but that doesn’t mean it is effective. We want to make sure the tools we use help us improve our trading strategy and, ultimately, make more money!