Quote from Bolimomo:
I started with Quick and Reilly "deep discount broker". Something like $70.00 commission per trade. Hey... that WAS Deep Discount at the time. Then I moved to Jack White & Company. Something like $30 per trade. Still steep.
Then I had tried E-Trade, Lombard, Ameritrade, Datek, Scottrade, etc. over the years. I know there are a lot of viewers here using Scottrade. But I am not impressed with them. Years ago... I tried to use my Scottrade account to short Intel (INTC). They said "no inventory". WHAT? If you can't short a stock as thick as Intel, what stock can you short??? No more Scottrade for me from that point.
I started using Direct Access Platforms like RealTick and CyberTrader. I really like Cyber. But Schwab bought them out a few years ago. And Schwab managed to turn the Cyber platform into shit.
Nowadays: 16 years into my trading journey... I use only RealTick and TradeStation. TradeStation for charting. RealTick for level 2 and order executions.
I may as well keep trading into my late 90s.