Traders who like to have a fully-featured trading platform won't be disappointed with what TD Ameritrade has to offer, as its web, desktop, and mobile platforms make placing a trade a snap.
Its web platform is designed for fundamental investors, offering streaming quotes, custom alerts, and screeners to quickly sort through the market based on fundamental and technical parameters. Its highly-rated thinkorswim desktop platform is a favorite among active traders who need functionality like backtesting, level II quotes, and a graphic explanation of a position's expected profit or loss.
TD Ameritrade's mobile platform is no slouch, either, as it offers level II quotes, conditional orders, and even complex option trades on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. The app is available on virtually every platform -- iOS, Android, and Windows -- and users can also navigate to its website from their devices to trade from a smaller screen, too.
Trading experience
TD Ameritrade has several different versions of its trading experience members can choose to use. Its desktop platform is the easiest place to make a buy or sell order. Upon logging into the site, there is a "snapticket" button that brings up an easy-to-use order ticket. For basic stock transactions, customers enter the desired ticker symbol in the quote field, choose "buy" or "sell," the number of shares they want, and whether they want a market (best available price) or limit (set their own maximum price) order.
TD Ameritrade's mobile app has similar functionality. Both the desktop and mobile platforms can support more complex orders (such as short sales and options trading), but the order tickets are the same. There's also a user-friendly way to enter complex options orders, mutual fund orders, and more. Both versions have excellent customer support, either by phone or online, and one of TD Ameritrade's strengths is its vast library of educational resources.
For more advanced investors, the thinkorswim platform is a bit more complex by design, but entering basic stock trades is very easy. On a quote page, simply hover over the quote of the stock you want to buy, right click and select "buy," and proceed to fill in the ticket. This works in a similar way to the desktop platform.