"Range of Offerings: We've changed the calculations in this category. Because all the brokers let you trade stocks, long and short, and enter single-leg options orders online, we asked brokers how many stocks, on average, their customers can sell short, and awarded up to a half-point, based on the answer. Complex options trading, the availability of mutual funds, bonds, futures, commodities, international equities and currencies were also considered. A 5 means you can trade all of these online. We cut this category's weighting by half for software-based brokers, because their frequent traders usually focus on stocks and options."
