This month’s TradeKing promotion earns you $100 for opening a new account with the online broker. The number of people using the online brokerage has been growing quickly over the last few years, not due just to the TradeKing promotions but also because they make it cheaper and easier for their customers to invest their money in a number of ways.

Low Trading Commissions

With $4.95 trades and $0.65 per option contract and no account minimums TradeKing is one of the best options when it comes to low cost trading commissions.  Of course the TradeKing bonus where you earn a $100 signup bonus don’t hurt either, basically they’re equivalent to 20 free stock trades.

Options Trading Education

Low cost trades have an impact on your returns but TradeKing also offers a ton of trader education videos and webinars on stocks, bonds, and options that can help you with your investment decisions.  I’ve gone through the first few options trading webinars and have been working my way through their Options PlayBook, written by their options expert, Brian Overby.

Another kind of trading education are the forums and groups, called the Trader Network, where you can interact with the experts who do the webinars, as well as other TradeKing members.
If you’re looking for ideas and strategies for your portfolio or even to understand some of the concepts the pros use to analyze and evaluate their investments you can get answers in the forums. I haven’t taken advantage of this feature myself but this promotion reminds me I need to spend some time there.

If you don’t have a TradeKing account and want to try out their training and trader’s network you can earn the $100 bonus by signing up here.

Online Stock Trading Tools

Another feature I haven’t made good use of yet are their calculators, reports, and screens.  For example, here are some of the tools I’ve been meaning to spend more time with:

• MarketGrader Research Reports
• Probability & Profit and Loss Calculators
• Stock and Option Screeners
• Technical Analysis Tools

TradeKing also provides the Maxit Tax Manager to help sort things out with your accountant or tax software come tax time.

Customer Service

Those kind of tools are something you’d expect of any online brokerage but one cool thing about TradeKing is that they’re willing to help you out with questions you have about them.  Their online broker chat option lets you ask questions when you’re stuck or trying to figure something out; I’ve also gotten fast email responses to my inquiries.

I’ve never called in so I can’t speak to their telephone hold times but SmartMoney and Kiplinger’s rated TradeKing tops for customer service in recent online broker surveys.

TradeKing Promotion

The TradeKing promotion runs through the end of the month, after you open an account with $2,500 and make your first 3 trades, you’ll earn the $100 bonus.  There’s no promotion code needed but you do have to sign up through the following promotion link to earn the bonus – Click Here for Bonus

Stocks and Taxes

When I was on the TradeKing site looking for more info about the promotion I was reminded of the tax software they offer to investors called Maxit Tax Manager.  Maxit is made by Scivantage and is the same tax software that Vanguard uses for real-time analysis of capital gains and losses for investments.  The cost basis and tax reporting tool comes in pretty handy this time of the year as tax season approaches.

Mobile Trading, Charts, & News

I don’t have an iPhone so I haven’t been able to test it out but I also saw that TradeKing has an iPhone and Blackberry app you can use to access your account on the go.  I’m not a super-frequent trader so I don’t know how much I’d use the trading option but it would be cool to see news and quotes on your investments just to see what’s going on with them.

Looks like there will also be a TradeKing Android and iPad mobile app coming soon as well.  Like I said, smart phones aren’t in my budget right now, so I haven’t accessed TradeKing mobile but here’s what you can do:

• Trade stocks and options
• Check account activity
• Get quotes and charts
• Track the news

I guess things like mobile access and easier tax tracking are some of the things that earned them top marks in customer service in SmartMoney’s last online broker review.  If you want to check it out, the promotion for new members is over at the end of the month.  There is no TradeKing promotion code this time, instead you have to sign up through the promotion link to earn the bonus – Click Here for Bonus.

TradeKing promotions like this latest $50 referral bonus help explain why the number of investors opening a TradeKing account grew by about 50% last year.  According to the online brokerage, many of these people were new to self directed investing so they’ve focused heavily on education and training for new investors.

The current promotion gives new customers a $50 bonus if they’re referred by an existing investor, then deposit money into the new account and make a trade. TradeKing doesn’t leave new customers hanging; they offer new client orientation webinars where they go over a range of topics like monthly statements / trade confirms, how to place orders, and how to track trades for tax purposes.

TradeKing Training

As a TradeKing customer I get their training annoucements every 2–3 weeks where they publish thier schedule of education webinars.  As I mentioned, some are specifically for new customers, such as explaining the difference between Market, Limit, Stop and Stop Limit orders and how to read market data (the bid, the ask, size, and volume).  The webinars also cover more advanced topics like trailing stops, Candlestick charting, and stock trends (ex: CBOE Equity Put/Call Ratio, CBOE Volatility Index, Acceleration Bands).

TradeKing Referrals

While there are lots of online stock brokerages to choose from, not many offer a $50 referral bonus like TradeKing.  Of course customers aren’t just opening an account for the cash promotion, the quality of the brokerage is what’s really important.  It doesn’t hurt that TradeKing has consistently received high marks over the last few years:

• SmartMoney magazine gave TradeKing a five-star rating for both the quality of its service and trading tools.
• Barron’s Online Broker survey has given TradeKing a 4 out of 5 star rating for four consecutive years.

• Wall Street & Technology featured TradeKing as one of the most innovative investment firms

This latest promotion only runs through the start of next month, for more details on the TradeKing bonus click here.

Her son suggested she open her own account but she had the whole process built up in her mind to be too complex for her to ever understand. I told her I’d put together an overview of the account opening process to show her that’s it’s really not that complicated.

I went through in the Spring and took screen captures of opening a TradeKing account but then we had a baby so I’ve been a little distracted since then. Anyhow, here is a visual walkthrough of opening an account and the 10 main questions you have to answer to complete to an application for their online brokerage account.

1. What’s Your Basic Info?





2. What Will Be Your Secure Code?









3. Which Type of Account?









4. Who Are You?









5. Where Do You Work?









6. How Much Money Do You Have & What is Your Trading Experience?









7. Do You Have a TradeKing Promotional Code & What Are Your Affiliations?









8. What Are Your Investment Goals?









9. Do You Agree To Follow the Rules?











10. Give Your Electronic Signature









11. TradeKing Application Complete!

Of course, opening an account’s not so bad; it’s actually the easy part. Setting your investing strategy & buying and selling stocks is where the uncertainty comes in. To open a TradeKing account, click here.

This year the market has a lot more positive momentum than it did last fall and some of the people that were sitting on the sidelines are getting back in.  TradeKing is offering a $50 bonus if you open a new account and try out their stock trading platform.  You can read more about pros and cons of the online brokerage in this TradeKing review.

I had forgotten that they extended the promotion by a month last year until I recently got an email from TradeKing announcing they were pushing the deadline out a month.  They didn’t push it any further last year so if that’s any indication then this month will likely be the last chance for the bonus in 2009.

There is no TradeKing promo code necessary simply signup here and you get your $50 bonus after you fund your account with at least $2,500 and make your first trade.