Stock trading talk.

Even though I've effectively frozen all stock trading right now, it would seem that I don't want to stop delving deeper and deeper into it either.

So, anyways, I'm mulling over whether to stay with Scottrade, or switch over to either WellsTrade or OptionsHouse.

Scottrade is perfectly fine, but for me, it's also the middle-of-the-road option for discount retailer brokerages, and I think there might be something cheaper and better out there?

For example, WellsTrade will give me up to 100 free trades per year. If I had maxed that out with Scottrade, it would be up to $700 per year in trading fees.

OptionsHouse has one of the lowest rates in the industry, and like Scottrade, they work on flat fees. At the very least, while Scottrade's $7 per trade fee is pretty good, OptionsHouse is even better at only $3 per trade. And as the name implies, OptionsHouse is geared towards option trading, so I can continue to trade stocks if I wish, but have plenty of room to grow into options as well. Best of all, OptionsHouse also has a flat fee for options contracts, $10, which is actually kind of high unless you write relatively big lots. But to me, that also means the orders can be scalable while the price remains the same!

OH also lets you set up with a virtual account, so that's what I am currently tinkering with.

So anyways, that's what I'm thinking. WellsTrade if I just want to stick with casual stocks, and OH if I want to get into options. I could stay with Scottrade and even use their OptionsFirst program, but their tickets are $7, followed by $1.25 per contract! That's pretty expensive!

But don't worry. I'm taking my sweet old time on this because it will be a while before I can get my money together to open a real account. Two years maybe? It will probably take at least that long for me to get the hang of using basic options anyways, let alone try anything fancy.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?