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Description:

"We divvied up our brokers into two camps -- firms that are accessible through their own proprietary software and others that you reach through Web browsers akin to those used for online banking....

Barron's ranked the top online brokers (both web-based brokers) and software-based by the following measures:

Trade Experience: Working with a live account, we looked for a real-time quote and executed equity trades during market hours, making market buys and limit sales of a stock or exchange-traded fund. Following the market buy, we tracked the execution and portfolio reports.

Trading Technology: The availability of price-improvement strategies and smart-order routing technology (which finds the best bid or offer), and the absence of internalized orders and reliance on payment for order flow were necessary to earn a 5 in this category.

Usability: A 5 here means the site was easy to use and well-designed, didn't bog down when moving from screen to screen, and can be tailored to the user's needs.

Range of Offerings: We awarded points for the diversity of investments that can be traded online, with partial points given for those that can only be traded offline.

Research Amenities: This category measures the quality and accessibility of research, quotes and charting.

Portfolio Analysis and Reports: The emphasis here is on clearly laid-out reports, updated in real time, showing current balances, positions and margin status.

Help and Customer Access: We sized up online help such as live-chat capability, user guides and frequently-asked-question files. Offline help was assessed by making calls to customer service, and weighing the brokers' reports of the average time spent on hold when a customer calls in.

Costs: We looked at commissions for stock and options trades and margin interest rates, giving more points for lower costs.

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