TD Ameritrade or Firstrade?

I actually wrote a blog post quite awhile ago on Firstrade which you can read up in details here.

But in a nutshell, as many other users point out:

1. Firstrade withdraw fees for international users (like all of us unless you are an American citizen) will be $50 and $25 for TD

2. Both offer $0 commissions free trading

3. Firstrade requires you to remit the money in SGD to USD yourself (do it via Stan Chart remit it has the best rate/or DBS/POSB remit) and using the 2 banks here will incur $0 remittance fees. VS TD which will auto convert the currency but from others experience the bid-offer spread is pretty bad so I would say Firstrade has more flexibility here.

4. Firstrade's wire transfer takes around 1 day to 2 days to reflect in the account (based on own experience) vs TD 2-3 days.

5. Firstrade's computer platform is more intuitive and beginner friendly than TD

6. The Firstrade mobile app is sleek and trade execution in less than 1 second. The moment you click buy or sell the trade are executed straight away, if im not wrong TD is not immediate execution.

7. Firstrade offers free Morningstar Premium Stock Analaysis VS TD which does not offer. I feel this is a huge edge because these analysis are a GEM and helps with my due diligence, cutting down a huge amount of time on research.

So overall, based on my own personal experience, Firstrade is a under-the-radar gem that has yet to be used by majority of users in Singapore due to the lack of information and trust.

But as a brokerage firm, Firstrade is actually more trustworthy than Saxo/TD/Tiger/FSMone/POEMs because they have been in the industry for over 40 years. They are also a member of FINRA and SIPC which are monetary regulators that are much bigger than our local MAS.

My group of friends in University has already switched over to Firstrade after I showed them what they are missing and they have switched from their various brokers of Tiger/Saxo/IB/FSM and were happy with the switch. It's just a matter of time before people realise how good it actually is and it REALLY is that good.​​​

Been using TD since 2013. It's a robust platform that's straightforward and easy to use, yet offer powerful tools if you need them. I know of traders who run custom charting scripts that can only run on Td.

The mobile app is also easy to use for simple order placements.

For stock transactions, Td does not charge any comm but there's still the misc regulatory fees charged I believe. These are quite mynute though.