 What's happening? It's Shane here. So stockbrokers basically have a long history of overcharging people and also not offering the best service. They would charge outrageous fees and they'd make everything just ridiculously over complicated. You'd have to have a minimum amount that you invest like maybe you'd have to invest at least $5,000 in order to open account. And because of this, investing just was not accessible for the average person. A lot of the time people wouldn't end up investing until their 30s or their 40s just because of the fact that it's not easy. Then companies like Robinhood came along and they basically changed the entire game by charging no fees and making investing ridiculously easy and accessible for everybody. Other companies were forced to adjust and ever since then it's basically been an arms race to see who can provide the customers with the best value. So at this point a lot of things have settled and I think it's time for me to do a tier list and just show you guys what in my opinion are the best stockbrokers out there. Now all of these brokers that I'm going to mention I've either invested with myself, I have close friends who've invested with them, and all of them I've done a ton of research on. And if you appreciate all the work and the research that I put into each and every one of these videos, please don't forget to smash the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. So let's jump right in. Number one on the list is going to be Ally Invest. Now you might recognize Ally because they have one of the best online bank accounts out there and I think this is one of those companies that's headed in the right direction in terms of offering a bunch of different services that all give a lot of value. And I really like this because it would be nice if I could just have all of my different accounts, you know, bank accounts, savings accounts, investment accounts, credit card, et cetera, all of them just under one company that would make things a lot less complicated. I really do think that Ally Invest and the company Ally in general is one of the most underrated companies out there. Their apps are really good, their website is really easy and just user friendly. This company is really underrated in my opinion. I think they do a lot of amazing things. Ally Invest goes in A tier. The next one on the list is going to be one that you might not have heard about and that's going to be Chase Sapphire Banking. Now this one is technically an exclusive service and I think you have to have at least $75,000 invested to even be considered for it. But if you are able to get accepted into this program, you're going to have a personal representative that's a finance expert. This is basically like having your own personal financial advisor that you can call whenever you want. They also primarily do their investing through Fidelity and Vanguard and those are two of my favorite brokerages because they offer some of the best index funds around. So if you do qualify for this one, you should definitely look into it. But I'm guessing that most of my audience does not qualify. And so for that reason, it's only going to go into A tier. The next one on the list is going to be Charles Schwab and this is one of the best options out there. This is a company that puts their customer first. You see it again and again whether you're looking at investment accounts, bank accounts, savings accounts, all of those different things. You can see that Charles Schwab puts a lot of thought into making their customers as happy as possible. They're not trying to make a quick buck. They're focused on the long game. They have really competitive fees and it really doesn't matter what type of stock trading you're doing. Now they do have a platform where they offer day trading and you know, that's something I'm not a big fan of. But it seems like they've kind of separated their main brand from their day trading brand, which I think is a good thing because if they made it part of their main brand, I think that would eventually ruin their reputation. The overall Charles Schwab is one of the best ones on the list. They are going to go into S tier. E-Trade is going to be next on the list and they are one of the first online brokerages that ever existed and you can tell they have a lot of experience as an online brokerage because their main website is really user-friendly and easy to use and their two mobile apps are also the same way. Now it does seem like they have a huge focus on options trading and that sort of thing and you know, you guys know I'm not a big fan of that. To me that does say a lot about a company when they recommend stuff like that, but they do offer all other types of investments as well so I can't ding them too much on that. Overall, E-Trade is a pretty good option. I'm going to go ahead and put them in B tier status. They're pretty good. It's just that there's other options that are better. Next one on the list is going to be Fidelity and man, this is an amazing company. I've been doing a ton of research on this in the last month in order to prepare for these videos and Fidelity, time and time again, whether I'm looking at credit cards, bank accounts, investment accounts, etc. They're always offer one of the best offers out there. For instance, their credit card was one of the best ones that I looked into. Pretty much doesn't matter what you're looking into. Fidelity is always going to be at the top or very near to the top of the list and this shows that they are focused on just the lighting their customers and I love to see this in businesses. Now, on top of that, I give them extra points because of the fact that they seem to kind of push index funds and other types of really good investments onto people a lot more than they push stuff like day trading. To me, that shows that it's a company with a lot of integrity because they're trying to get people to invest in things that are going to be really good for them long term whereas something like day trading 99% of people either don't make any money or they actually end up losing money. On top of that, their website and their app are extremely user friendly. I've been using Fidelity for a long time and I'm super happy with them. Absolutely love this company. I love the direction they're going, how they're trying to kind of combine all of the different services, whether it comes to bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, etc. This is the company that in my opinion is the closest to having a entire personal finance solution to the point where you'd only have to use one company for all of your needs. Love Fidelity could go on and on about them. They're definitely S tier. Interactive Brokers is going to be next on the list and as a lot of you know, they have a very heavy emphasis on day trading and you know how I feel about day trading. I'm not going to go over it again but almost everybody who tries day trading actually ends up losing money. There are a few people out there who are true experts at day trading that can make a good living from it but those people are few and far between. Now many of the professional day traders out there do actually use Interactive Broker for their day trades. So if you are going to go that direction, which I don't recommend that you do, Interactive Broker would probably be one of the better choices for you. But with that being said, I can't put them any higher than a C. Lightspeed is going to be next on this list and they're very similar to Interactive Broker. This is another one that gets mentioned a lot with the few people who are successful day traders. So they basically charge you about $130 a month in order to use their software and you don't have to pay the $130 a month as long as you use the software and you're like an active trader. So this basically incentivizes people to buy and sell all the time. But when it comes to investing, a lot of the time, the best move that you can make is to not make a move and with Lightspeed you might end up getting punished for that by having to pay the $130 a month. So maybe if you're a pro and you just do a ton of trades all the time, this might be a good option for you. But overall, I'm going to put this one in D tier. The next one on the list is going to be Merrill Edge and this is basically the brokerage for Bank of America. The trading platform for Merrill Edge is called Merrill Edge Market Pro. Now you don't have to be a Bank of America customer in order to sign up for them. However, if you are a customer, you're going to get some extra perks and some extra benefits. Now in doing my research, Merrill Edge showed up time and time again as having some of the best customer service out of all of the ones on this list. They also don't focus as much on stuff like day trading and instead they put an emphasis on educating people on how to invest. When I was doing my research, I saw that they had videos on how to invest in index funds, mutual funds and how to open a Roth IRA. And to me, this is a sign of the company has a lot of integrity and they're not going to try to sell you some get rich quick trading schemes. Overall, they're not quite good enough to make it into S tier, but this is a very high A tier status. Maybe next year, if I do this list again, they will have made it into S tier because they are headed in the right direction. Next one on the list is going to be Option Express and this is a company that's separate from but owned by Charles Schwab. Now like I said before, I like Charles Schwab a lot. They did open this company and they made it separate from their main company, which I think was a really good move. These guys are really unapologetic about what they do, which is of course options trading. And of course, I'm not a big fan of this. You can become successful with it, but it's very rare. And so for that reason, I'm going to have to go ahead and put this one into F tier. Next one on the list is going to be Robinhood and they are one of my favorite companies in the entire world. Robinhood changed the game forever when they came out with $0 transaction fees. You can open up an account with basically any amount of money. It's super easy. You can set it up in five to 10 minutes. And on top of all of that, you actually get a reward in the form of free stocks just for signing up. Because of what they did, they caused hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to start investing that might not have otherwise. And before Robinhood came around, brokerages would charge ridiculous investing fees. Like let's say you were buying $100 stock, they might charge you $4.95 just to buy it. And so you'd have to buy at least like $10,000 worth of stock for it to even be worth it. And the average person simply does not have $10,000 lying around. Then Robinhood came along and they made investing ridiculously easy. Robinhood has done so much for the investing community. Because of them, all of the other companies kind of dropped most of their trading fees and they're just offering their customers much better service overall. Robinhood is going to go into strong A tier status. Next one on the list is going to be TD Ameritrade. And you might be a little bit surprised at where I ended up ranking them. So TD Ameritrade is honestly just a really good company overall. They offer some of the best customer service around. They also have a ton of educational videos about investing on their website, which is something that I love to see. This tells me that they're interested in teaching people how to make money and not just making a bunch of money for themselves. Now they put a ton of emphasis on their day trading platform called the thinkorswim. And without getting into too much detail here, companies that offer these day trading platforms end up making a ton of money for them. So it's really good for the company, but it's not necessarily good for the people who start day trading. Something like 97 to 99% of day traders end up losing money, not breaking even, not barely making any money, straight up losing money. So day trading is not a good investment by any means, but a ton of companies are hopping onto this just because of the volume of trades the companies end up making quite a bit of money. And that's why you see about 100,000 channels on YouTube with dudes sitting in front of their computer smiling telling you how much money they made that day off of day trading. It's all about that money, baby. Some companies are okay with selling their integrity to make some money in the short term. And the feeling that I get from TD Ameritrade is they are kind of moving in this direction. And because of that, it makes it a little bit difficult for me to trust them, but they do offer other types of investing as well. And those platforms are excellent. In fact, if you look at the lists online, they oftentimes grayed out as some of the best, but overall, I'm going to go ahead and give them B tier status. Trade station is next on the list. And this is another one that's all about day trading, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, C tier, they're one of the better ones, I guess, but they're not that great overall. Next one on the list is going to be Vanguard. And this is one of my favorite companies of all time. So Vanguard was started by the legendary investor, John Bogle, and he was basically the father of index funds. So at a time in history where all of the financial companies were telling you to invest in other things besides index funds, he was the one who looked at the data and he said, if you just diversify your money across the market, this is going to be the best possible outcome for the average investor. Now this was all the way back in 1975. And they were one of the only companies that was sticking to their guns when it comes to index funds. Just about everybody else was recommending all kinds of other stuff that wasn't necessarily the best option for the investor. So this is a company I have a ton of respect for because they have a track record of giving people really good advice for about 45 years now. Now I have to admit, they are lagging behind when it comes to, you know, their app and their user interface on their website. They're basically like the boomers of the brokerage came. That's what I like to say. They haven't quite caught up to the times, but I really hope they will do that pretty soon. And I'm sure they will. Vanguard is a company I trust more than any company on the entire list. I really like them a lot. They go into S tier. Next one on the list is going to be Webull. And this one is very similar to Robinhood. They have almost identical offerings. In fact, Robinhood and Webull are huge competitors. It kind of reminds me of like Uber and Lyft competing with each other. But what I really like about Webull is their emphasis on getting people to start investing. Because when you ask me the question, what is the best investment that you can make? The answer to that question is the best investment is the one that gets you to start investing and keep investing. And they have one of the best offers where if you invest $100 into their account, they will give you two free stocks valued up to $1400. And because of this, there's tons of people out there that probably started investing much earlier than they would have if it wasn't for the fact that Webull or Robinhood existed. And that small gesture can be the difference between someone starting investing at 18 and maybe not starting until they're in their 30s or 40s. This can make hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of difference down the line. And for that reason, I really respect Webull and Robinhood. And I think they've made a huge impact on the investing community. So for that reason, Webull is also going to go into A tier. Check out my videos right here. I made them just for you. Go ahead, smash the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera that you have on the list. Let me know your experiences with these different brokers. I really want to hear the ones you've used. A lot of the time people will bring up really good arguments in the comments section. And then I'll go ahead and reevaluate my video and change things in the future. I really like that because it basically just starts a conversation and we all end up winning in the end. Thank you so much for watching and bye for now.