Best discount stock broker?

Hi there, I was looking into investing $5000 into shares and I was in search of a cheap and reliable stock broker.

I would greatly appreciate if I could get a feedback for the following brokers:

Bell Direct $15/trade - do they have a stop loss system in place? I can't find it on the website, could anybody who uses this online broker pls tell me?

CommSec $19.95/trade - do they have additional ("hidden") fees apart from the brokerage fees?

optionsXpress $23.95/trade - given they're a discount broker and they charge more than the other two mentioned, are they worth the extra cash u have to pay for?

Bell Direct looks like the best for me but they don't provide Short Selling options and I'm not sure whether they have stop loss system. Apart from that they seem excellent.

Would greatly appreciate feedback!!

As far as a I know, there is a widely discussion about this issue in the previous post.

The best solution is to open a account with etrade using their free trade offer.
then transfer shares to commec sec using their free trade offer.
Then transfer to IB using their $6 per trade offer.

There is an article in the latest Smart Investor on online brokers. Compares 6 of the main online brokers -

NAB,
Comsec,
E-trade,
IB,
Onetrade
Macquarie

It will tell you what you can or cannot do and associated costs.

Tim

tcoates said:

There is an article in the latest Smart Investor on online brokers.

Click to expand...

thanks for that tim. the article can be found online at afr HERE

I use BellDirect & CommSec - prefer BellDirect - cheaper trades, better website/interface, much cleaner & quicker to use. I've been using them for a few months now & works perfectly every time!