Charles Schwab

As promised here is the second review of a discount brokerage firm.  First, we looked at Trade King which received a score of 41 out of a possible 60 points.  Now we will examine Charles Schwab using the same set of factors.  We will give a score for these 6 factors, on a scale of 1 to 10, and sum the scores up to see who offers the best place to trade online.  

1. Price

2. Website Ease

3. Offerings

4. Service

5. Margin Rates

6. Execution

• Price: For balances under 1 million dollars, Schwab offers a rate of $12.95 per trade.  Definitely higher than Trade King, Scottrade, and a host of others.  However, 13 dollars is still not that expensive in the world of trading.  But, for day traders the cost can quickly add up.  On the other hand, Schwab offers zero fees for certain mutual funds that qualify under their OneSource Service.  Which mutual funds qualify can be found here.  The commmission on option contracts is a little pit more pricey with a price of $16.45 for each 10 option contracts.  For mutual funds not listed under the OneSource Service, the trade will put you back $17.00 dollars.  Score of 5.
• Website Ease: Schwab's website is sort of like many sites across the internet.  Full of good content, but completely hard to locate relative items, and rough on the eyes.  The site when looked at from afar, resembles a collection of junk strewn across a web page.  By putting a little more though into the presentation of the site, they could improve user ease and satisfaction.  Score of 4.  
• Offerings: Schwab definitely has more offerings than Trade King.  It offers, futures, options, equities, bonds, and one international exchange (Tornoto).  This allows Schwab to be above average, and beat out Trade King and Scottrade in this category.  Score of 6.  
• Service: While there have been a lot of complaints above Schwab's service, I found the service to be better than par.  They are definitely ready to assist with any rollovers or movements in your account.  The staff seems well trained to answer most of your questions, but they lack in physical offices.  Schwab does not have offices in many smaller cities, with decent populations.  This harms their service, but also puts them in line with other discount brokerage firms.  Score of 7.
• Margin Rates: This is the category you can see the clearest difference between other companies and Schwab.  Schwab offers much higher rates, than any of the other discount firms profiled, or to be profiled.  Compare Trade King versus Schwab.  For margin borrowing over 1 million dollars, you will get a rate of 4.5% with Trade King versus a rate of 6.25% with Schwab.  A total of 175 basis points higher than Trade King.  Not a good place to use margin, especially on borrowings of between $0 and $25,000.  Where you will pay around 8.50% for using margin.   You can find the current margin rates here.   Score of 2.  
• Execution: The execution statistics for Schwab are similiar to Trade King.  They are above average.  Score of 6.  
• Overall: It seems that overall Schwab performs very poorly.  They do have a good reputation and they do offer a solid amount of services.  But, they could definitely benefit from better margin rates, an improved website and lower fees.  I doubt they will ever lower their fees, so they are served best to focus on the other criticisms.  Why someone would pick Schwab over other discount brokers is something that clearly makes me wonder.  Unless, someone prefers talking to an actual broker, Schwab is not the firm they should be utilizing.  
• Total Score: 30