Best Day Trading Platforms and Brokers in the US 2024

Additionally, you may wish to invest in other aspects of the Robinhood platform where retirement, gold and/or cash accounts are available, all in an effort to centralize your finances. Because Plus500 doesn’t charge a commission and only profits on spreads, you save money and don’t have to worry about overpriced fees. If you’re a beginner, there are insights, the Trading Academy and webinars you can check out on YouTube.

All research, writing and data collection at StockBrokers.com is done by humans, for humans. In today’s market, hedge funds running sophisticated algorithms make it very difficult to day trade profitably. Most day traders are also severely undercapitalized and get suckered into paying for expensive chat room memberships, educational courses, and newsletter subscriptions on social media.

Best Day Trading Platforms 2024

The truth is, while it is possible to make a good living as a day trader, it takes time, dedication, and hard work to become successful. Cryptocurrencies are not subject to day trading minimum deposit regulations, so you’re just limited by the amount of risk capital you have available to trade with. Your crypto trading costs will generally depend on the dealing spreads if you use contracts for difference (CFDs) to trade them with, and you can often trade them on margin. If you do not use CFDs, you might need to pay for a wallet to store your cryptocurrencies in.

For each trade on E-mini and Micro contracts, Tickmill reimburses up to 16% of your trading commissions. One sensible risk management technique is to limit the amount of capital invested in a single trade. This ensures that even in a run of bad losses, your total trading capital won’t be wiped out.

Overview: Top online brokers for day trading in June 2024

That said, day trading is inherently risky with many active investors losing money. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) official definition of a day trader is an investor who executes 4 or more day trades within a 5 business day period. Traders of all skill levels will also appreciate the $0 commission fees and low margin rates that make frequent day trading cost-effective.

• IBKR is just one of 26 online brokers that we evaluated based on 89 criteria, including available assets, account services, user experience, and additional features.
• FINRA requires U.S. pattern day traders to have an equity balance of at least $25,000 in a margin account.
• It’s a useful tool to lock in profits or limit losses, without investors having to manually reset the stop loss when the share price changes.

If you’re a day trader or a prospective one, you’ll definitely want a brokerage that fits your needs. Unlike buy-and-hold investors — who access the market infrequently — day traders need to optimize for low costs, as well as utilize tools such as trading platforms and solid fundamental research. Unlike casual or buy-and-hold investors, day traders need to optimize for low costs and tools such as trading platforms and solid fundamental research. It’s common for day traders to have multiple brokerage accounts and use several trading platforms simultaneously. A trader might prefer the chart analysis tools of one broker but prefer to trade options at another.

Best Day Trading Platforms and Brokers in the US 2024 Comparison

Overall, Bestinvest provides a good all-round service, particularly for investors mainly trading in US shares. We researched a range of trading platforms and have listed our findings below. FOREX.com ranks No. 1 as our choice for the best forex broker for U.S.-based traders. Moomoo offers Level 2 quotes from NYSE Arcabook, NYSE Open book, and Nasdaq Total View, covering order books from electronic securities exchanges with top 3 trading volumes. In addition, it often has free NYSE Arcabook data promotions, which is super competitive because the industry usually charges fees for it. No matter what the size of a trader’s account is, they are likely to find the strongest feature of this platform, by far, is its sophisticated analytics.

This makes it the most popular cryptocurrency among traders and investors alike. Spreads are always floating, so the spreads in the table above are yesterday’s averages. High volume Cryptocurrency Faucets traders in particular benefit from brokers with superior execution speeds and robust customer support, ensuring swift transactions and reliable assistance for complex issues.

Best Overall: Interactive Brokers

Here’s a breakdown of what our founder, Blain Reinkensmeyer, learned from day trading. I opened broker accounts and traded at 17 brokers to evaluate their web, mobile, and, when available, desktop platforms to find the best broker for day trading. I assessed each platform across dozens of features and got a feel for their overall design and appeal. Naturally, I also evaluated trading costs, including commissions and order execution.

Its intuitive interface and clear, concise educational content make it an excellent choice for both experienced and novice traders. Robinhood offers comprehensive support for cryptocurrency trading, with no commissions or markups on trades, which can make it a cost-effective option for those interested in crypto. Additionally, the platform’s Learn section, which is available to anyone without the need for an account, features exceptional writing that provides valuable insights and information. With these features and its ease of use, Robinhood is an excellent platform for those looking to trade options.

We combined our industry research, subject matter expertise, and investor survey data to guide the research and weightings for our 2024 online broker awards. To collect the data, we sent a digital survey with 110 questions to each of the 26 companies we included in our rubric. Additionally, our team of researchers verified the survey responses and collected any missing data points through online research and conversations with each company directly. A 2013 study claims that less than 1% of day traders are able to consistently earn unusually high returns in day trading.

It is a great trading platform if you want to dive deep into smart trading. Webull offers both a mobile-based and desktop app that are highly intuitive and perfect for beginning traders. Webull features fundamental and technical analysis tools that include advanced charting, technical indicators and up-to-date information on every asset. Providing readers with unbiased, comprehensive reviews of online brokers and trading platforms is a top priority for Investopedia.

Binary Options

With the ability to scan entire markets for liquidity and volume patterns to find volatility, you can trade for a profit. Interactive Brokers is a good choice for day traders because it offers free stock trading in the US and industry-leading low-margin rates for traders using leverage to trade. Benzinga Pro is an excellent platform for day traders because it enables you to trade news events by providing the fastest streaming real-time news service. Benzinga’s live squawk box and news sentiment categories are a serious advantage for day traders.

Best Online Brokers for Futures Trading and Commodities

Cobra’s day trading platform, TraderPro, is well equipped with advanced charting capabilities. It features Level 2 quotes, hot keys and a locator to find stocks to borrow for short trading. TraderPro offers a decent level of customizable features for trading alerts, news and watch lists. One area where Cobra Trading stands out is in making it easy to short sell low-priced securities and penny stocks.