Once you are ready to become an investor, walking onto a Wall Street trading floor is not enough. You can bring the stock market to your mobile device or personal home computer by opening a brokerage account using an online broker that allows the user to invest ranging from individual stocks to five-star funds.
Todays, millions of people make investment. When it comes to invest, everyone may feel wonder to consider Td Ameritrade Vs Charles Schwab. To provide you with the clear understanding, here’s how the two brokers Td Ameritrade and Charles Schwab compare on key criteria for both investors and traders alike.
So we would like to see the comparison of the two brokers on trading cost and commission, commission-free funds, account minimums, trading platform, international stocks and ARDs, and research and other tools.
Before making decision which is to pick up from Td Ameritrade Vs Charles Schwab, let’s have a look at the detailed review sections.
Td Ameritrade Vs Charles Schwab: Trading Cost and Commission
Though the cost to place a trade is not everything, it is a crucial point to differentiate the brokers. So, comparing Td Ameritrade to Charles Schwab can be visibly see from trading cost and commissions.
It is noticed that both of the brokers permit the investors to buy and sell stocks, options, and exchange traded funds (ETFs) as well as mutual funds less expensively. In fact, an online trade can be made by the broker for fee.
Look at the following table to check out the broker’s standard commission fees.
| Broker | Stocks and ETFS | Stock Options | Mutual Funds |
| Charles Schwab | $0 per trade | $0.65 per contract | $49.95 (thousands for free) |
| Td Ameritrade | $ per trade | $0.65 per contract | $49.99 (thousands for free) |
Based on the table, it is clear that the price differences between the brokers are minor for most of the trade types, suiting the years of commission-free stock trading. Simply put, Charles Schwab pricing is mostly among the lowest one while Td Ameritrade pricing tend to be used among the highest in the industry.
Remember, both of the brokers come with a large selection of mutual funds and ETFs that everyone can trade without paying any commission. The freebies can help decrease your average trading costs.
Commission-Free Funds
If you like funds, then you have a good news. Both Td Ameritrade and Charles Schwab are closely matched. Both of them come with the long-list of no-transaction-fee (NTF) mutual funds and ETFs. In this case, the customers of the both brokerage are able to buy and sell the popular funds without a fee to charge. So, they are just free to trade. No payment required. This makes the trading commission or trading fee significantly reduce the investing cost.
| Fund type | Charles Schwab | Td Ameritrade |
| Total mutual funds | More than 10,100 | More than 13,000 |
| NTF mutual funds | More than 4,300 | More than 4,100 |
Based on the table above, Charles Schwab is much of advantage. Though it has only a fewer mutual funds, the OnceSource product lineup is great enough for the investors of mutual funds. Meanwhile, Td Ameritrade is no droop. The list of its commission-free NTF includes funds from most of the popular issuers such as iShares and SDPR.
Account Minimums
To compare Td Ameritrade Vs Charles Schwab, we can look over their account minimums, too. In this case, both Td Ameritrade and Charles Schwab have no minimum account sizes. The investors of the both brokers can actually open their account as little as $1.
To start a larger initial deposit, you need enough amount of money to buy at least one share of stock, ETF or mutual fund to invest. However, as the investment goes, a minimum deposit will be able to buy the “one share”.
Trading Platform
We can also see which one is better to choose between Td Ameritrade and Charles Schwab from their trading platform. In this case, it is quite probable that infrequent traders and long-term investors might not take trading platform into a concern. An active investor play in the financial markets of a true trading platform.
This way, Td Ameritrade is more widely used due to its desktop trading platform. Thinkorswim is its trading platform which is available for all Td Ameritrade clients no matter the account balances and trading activity. This trading platform is powerful enough since it is absolutely free. Further, this trading platform is customizable along with hundreds of charting tools and robust screeners. It also provides an easy access to economic data needed for analysis.
What’s more? Td Ameritrade also allows you to load up any Federal Reserve data set virtually only with a single click. As the platform runs, Thinkorswim is just one of the best platform.
By comparison, Charles Schwab comes with the desktop platform called StreetSmart Edge. This trading platform is free and easy-to-use. It comes with a fewer tools than its competitors. However, it offers some excellent charting tools you can utilize anytime.
The key features offered by StreetMart trading platform is “all-in-one” trade ticket that enables you to enter orders for multiple securities in one menu only. Thus, you can buy the stocks and sell option contracts. Further, this trading platform is advantageously featuring a customized layout, allowing you to front and center on your screen. Other popular features include OptionsXpress which was acquired by Schwab.
All in all, both Td Ameritrade and Charles Schwab offer great trading tools to let you trade through a web browser. They also offer a mobile app which is very handy to place trades on the go. Todays, either frequent traders or long-term investors tend to do the stock trading in simplified mobile apps or in a desktop and mobile browser.
International Stocks and ARDs
There are a big difference between Td Ameritrade and Charles Schwab when it comes to compare them on international stock and ADRs (American Depository Receipts). In a glance, Td Ameritrade offers access to ADRs but no access to trade foreign stocks on foreign markets.
On the other hand, Charles Schwab clients are able to use Schawab Global Account to place their online trades on 12 foreign markets in local currencies. In this case, if the client want to get a Global Account, it is just easy. This way, they don’t need to use any account minimum or fees to get the access. The trading commission is typically various according to the country. For instance, if you are trading on Japanese stock markets, you won’t be required to pay any cost like you are free to trade on German markets.
Research and Other Tools
Last, we can look over Td Ameritrade Vs Charles Schwab comparison in their research and other tools. In this case, both of the brokers are offering the same great research tools to help investors obtain their investment information as well as find the new stocks or fund to make a new investment.
Either Td Ameritrade or Charles Schwab offers the large number of screeners to help you sort through the market fast for finding stocks and funds based on the key criteria such as price-to-earnings ratios.
There are numerous daily updates on individual stocks and economic data offered by Td Ameritrade. It also comes with stock-specific research from several independent research companies. By comparison, Charles Schwab comes with a real depth in research. This way, the clients has an access to the proprietary research and commentary from in-house analyst. Further, they can also get the research from the third-party providers.
Along with Fidelity, Ameritrade and Charles Schwab fill the list of discount brokers that are highly popular among investors.
Final Words: Which One Wins?
All in all, Charles Schwab can be the right choice if you want to trade the stocks listed on international exchange. On the other hand, Td Ameritrade is just perfect for high activity investors and those who want to trade from anywhere around using mobile apps. Now which one to choose? The choice is on your hands.
