Firstrade was founded in 1985 by John C. Liu in Flushing, NY. Initially the firm was called Fir  st Flushing Securities and was created to serve the investment needs of the local community.

In 1997 the company was renamed Firstrade Securities and launched their website www.firstrade.com to take advantage of the huge number of people looking to trade online.

Despite Firstrade being one of the first online brokers they’re fairly small compared to the major players, its estimated they have around 60,000 retail clients.

The firm is unique in that its website is available in both simplified and traditional Chinese, and telephone support is available in both Mandarin and Chinese.

Firstrade Fees

• Stocks and ETFs: $6.95; for stocks at or under $2 and trades over 5,000 shares, add 1/2 cent per share for the entire order
• Options: $6.95 plus $0.75 per contract for market and limit orders
• Mutual funds: $9.95 no-load funds, $0 load funds
• Bonds: net yield basis
• CDs: $30 for primary market CDs, net yield basis for secondary market CDs
• Investment products: stocks, options, mutual funds, bonds, CDs, ETFs
• Minimum to open account: $0

Firstrade Website

Firstrade’s website at first glance looks to be ok, not surprising since it has just been redesigned. But when you start using it, you realize that it’s not that well laid out or intuitive.

There seems to be little logic to the layout and they’ve gone for that old broker website folly of displaying index quotes on the homepage (with a helpful note that prices are delayed by 15 minutes). Not really helpful at all.

That along with devoting nearly half the available screen space to T & Cs and disclaimers, mean I can hardly give this website the thumbs up. It looks dated and really needs someone to go through it and remove all the unnecessary elements.

Firstrade Account Set-up

When the Firstrade website was initially launched they came in for some stick regarding the sign-up process, it involved printing several forms and posting them off with your identification.

Well that was a long time ago now and things have moved on (hopefully), so lets see how their current sign-up procedure fares against the competition.

Well things don’t get off to a good start, I’m asked two questions before I even get to complete a form and the form itself is difficult to follow.

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t like filling in forms and sites like this are the reason why. Small cramped boxes, unclear questions and tiny radio buttons all belong back in 1995.

Is it an improvement over printing forms and sending them off? Yes. Is this now a world beating sign-up process? Definitely not.

Firstrade Trading Tools

Firstrade launched a new trading platform in October 2010; their previous platform was woefully inadequate regarding the quality of its tools and was in desperate need of a revamp.

Some of the features of this new platform are Advanced Dynamic Screeners, Stock Alerts by email and SMS, X-Stream streaming quotes and charts, research from S&P reports and the latest information from IPO, splits and earnings calendars. None of these tools are state of the art however; you can find them on most other trading platforms.

Firstrade were playing catch up in the trading tools department and they’ve caught up, to the back of the field. The online brokerage market is fiercely competitive and the top brokers are releasing new tools or platform upgrades every few months. If Firstrade want to get a world class trading platform they have some serious work to do.

Firstrade Advantages

• $0 minimum to open account
• 10,000 mutual funds and fixed income investments to choose from
• No inactivity or account maintenance fees
• No annual, setup or termination fees for IRA accounts
• Free dividend reinvestment

Firstrade Disadvantages

• Expensive commissions for stocks under $2 or orders of over 5,000
• Paper-heavy registration and service setup process
• Short Term Redemption Fee of $19.95 will be applied to redemptions of no-load fund shares held less than 180 days

Firstrade Summary

Firstrade was created as a local investment adviser and sometimes it feels like that’s where they still are. They seem oblivious to the competition and are neither the cheapest broker nor have the best platform.

To be fair they are not that expensive Firstrade’s $6.95 flat rate per trade for stocks and ETFs commission is not that bad. However, they have a 0.5 cent per share surcharge for stocks under $2 and for orders of over 5,000, making penny stock and large-size trades very expensive.

In short if you trade part time, in regular shares, keep your trade size bellow 5000, speak fluent Chinese and live close to Flushing, NY then Firstrade is the perfect broker for you. For everyone else there are better brokers available.

Click here to visit   Firstrade .