When it comes to choosing the right options brokerage, there are many different things that you must consider. To provide you with better insight as well as to help you begin your search, here are some of the most important factors that you need to take into consideration when choosing a brokerage.
- Trading Platform – To many options traders, having the right trading platform is absolutely essential. Having a good one would allow you to be quicker when it comes to doing analysis, adjusting all the different parameters before you enter an order and setting up a hypothetical trade. Now, to be able to accomplish all those things you would also need all sorts of information including risk profiles, P&L graphs, price and volatility and theoretical prices given a specific future date. This is why you would also require a platform that is able to keep all of your pending orders whilst you are doing further research. Also, do check if your chosen trading platform is providing you with a charting tool. This would certainly be very beneficial to you.
- Order Routing – When it comes to choosing an options brokerage, you should also consider order routing. For many traders, order routing has got two different aspects. The first of which would be ensuring the fact that their order gets sent to the widest possible spectrum of options exchanges as doing so could actually provide them with better pricing as well as a more liquid market. The second aspect would be the speed at which their order is sent to the exchange. Of course, ideally, you would want your order sent the moment you press the send button. After all, in this business, time is of the essence.
Of course, another important thing that you must do before you settle on one particular brokerage would be to conduct a thorough research of that particular firm’s reputation amongst other traders. After all, if you are to work with them for the long term, you would want to be sure that they would go through with their promises and that you can trust them.