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Customers score
Overall score
ChoiceTrade is one of those companies that hold a great reputation in the industry. It’s the name that everyone knows, which is not a surprise considering that it was established way back in 2000. Since then, the trading company has become a part of some of the most reputable financial organizations and regulatory bodies, including the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and SIPC. The latter is especially important and essential for the clients - since it requires the company to provide the investors’ protection up to $500.000 per account!
In addition, it offers commission-free stocks as well as ETF trading, which not a great number of companies do today, especially not the one with such a long track record. Furthermore, what particularly strikes my interests is the fact that ChoiceTrade is one of the few companies that regularly provide transparent financial statements at the end of each year. I don’t know about you, but for me, this was a turning point when deciding on a broker.
Platform and Execution SCORE: 33%
Still, for a platform that has such a reputation in the industry, I was kind of taken aback by its poor design. True to its form, the trading platform, unfortunately, looks like it hasn’t been updated since its very first design back in the early 2000s. This is a shame and a big downside for such a big name.
In addition, the clutter of the webpage makes it practically impossible to find your way around, so I can’t even imagine what that’s like for first-timers! Also, the two-step authentication of the account login is not available, which makes the ChoiceTrade clients prone to misuse of the funds and information. You need to step it up, ChoiceTrade!
Withdrawal Speed SCORE: 21%
What strikes me as particularly bad at the ChoiceTrade platform is the fact that the entire withdrawal process is quite complicated. There are a lot of documents that you need to provide, and then their team takes their sweet time to assess all of them and complete the entire process… It is a big inconvenience, to say the least.
In addition, the ChoiceTrade platform does not allow withdrawals through credit cards! This is astonishing to me, especially for such a high-level platform that has been present in the industry for 20 years. It seems to me that ChoiceTrade makes two misses for each hit, and the clients are starting to catch on.
Support and Assistance SCORE: 45%
At ChoiceTrade, you only have 2 options of contacting their team in case you need any help. Namely, the live chat option is missing from the website entirely, which is quite disappointing. And to top that off, the support team isn’t even available 24/7!
Still, the information they were able to provide me was quite helpful, although it took them about 2 days to respond via e-mail. This is not something to look forward to, especially in a busy market.
Education and Tools SCORE: 27%
The educational section of the website seems to be filled with information. But when you really take a look, you will notice that it is not regularly updated. This is a real shame, especially considering that there are so many new educational tools to keep track of in the trading community.
On the upside, the ChoiceTrade provides both the demo account and the trading platform tutorial, so you can get to know the way of trading and find what suits you the most before jumping on the real deal.