Firstrade vs Tastyworks

[Opcodes]

Which of those brokers seems to be more reliable, safe and secure? I don't have much bigger choice as I am from Europe and most US brokerage companies(like Schwab or Fidelity) are not allowing non-US customers. I am primarily into buy and hold ETFs with some extra trades/options on stocks only as secondary.

i can only tell you firstrade's customer support sucks big time

 

[paget]

Reliability, safety and security for a broker can neither be defined or measured; you might as well asf if they serve snacks. Pick something else.

Yeah, I get you. But it's still possible to compare those two to other brokers or to each other. I'm not asking for detailed comparisons, just for peoples opinions and experiences with them.

 

[paget]

I have tried to contact them, as for customer support both aren't best but at least tastyworks answered my emails and picked up the phone. For Firstrade, when calling them I had random messages which were like "you are number 23 in queue" or "the wait time is 173 minutes", sometimes after waiting all that time they just broke the call, but sometimes they picked it after just few minutes. In both cases people I talked to weren't able to answer more complicated questions. Is this normal business practice these days for such discount brokers? Are bigger companies(which I don't have access to) any better?

 

[Eikfe]

Yes, they are not offering US ETFs for EU customers.

You can workaround this by selling a PUT of the ETF you want

 

[paget]

I know but then I would have to buy in bulks of 100's.