Here is my philosophy on brokers, PDT and a small account

 

 When you have less then 27k dollars

 
I have found that each broker has strengths and weakness but the major part is broker fee's especially when you have a small account. I know Tim Sykes says over and over again don’t worry about fee's but guess what I'm learning and part of the process is understanding what the "ideal setup" is and I will make lots of mistakes refining and learning what an ideal setup is.  Honestly the PDT is a pain in the ass. For an example with Etrade I did one trade last week where I added twice in the same day and sold. And then again this week I did one trade and added twice and sold once guess what I have violated the PDT rule they counted that as 4 trades. But if I did the same trade with interactive brokers(IB) it would have been two trades.  Or here is another kicker with IB if I start a trade today and hold it over night and decided to add in premarket then sell on the morning spike. Guess what that is a pdt trade. What I am saying is PDT is more complicated then you get 3 trades in a 5 day rolling period. I do agree that you must learn and apply. Study a lot and then apply that’s why  that I am over a year learning this and average 7 trades per month . So if I had to do it all over again and I had limited money this is what I would tell someone new

 
Save up 525 dollars and first open a TD Ameritrade account. Why? Because they give you charting software and level 2 for free and you get a mobile app too. I have to admit its pretty awesome setup they have. I personally use Think or swim as  back up to Stocks to trade. . It takes about two weeks to complete the setup. 

 
Now I would take out 524 dollar and then open up a Etrade account. This process also take about 2 weeks of time. Don't sign up for the pro desktop software its 100 dollars a month or X amount of trades. Honestly your not going to make that many trades and its not worth the 100 dollars a month besides you have Td Ameriatrade for that. Now withdrawal 523 dollars 

 
If you have more money like access to 10k I would highly suggest opening up an Interactive broker account. You don't have to leave 10k in the account. You can return it to whoever you borrowed it from. For me I have a company and I borrowed it from my company and put it back. It takes about 2 weeks. The nice part about IB is when you want to transfer your money out they do it in 24 hours as long as you do it in the morning. Its pretty nice.

 
Ok now here is a controversy account Suretrade. It’s a foreign account and you can get around pdt with the account and you get 6:1 leverage. It’s a pain in the ass  to setup and takes time. Deposit 523 dollars in it.  Yyour 523 dollars is now locked in Suretrader. Don't try to get it out because it will cost you 45 dollar to pull your money out. Also don't leave too much money in it. You can take out 2k at a time which cost you 45 dollars. As you profit take money out. You will not use suretrader in the future. It's just a tool to help you build up your trading accounts. I would suggest no more then 10k in the account. You have zero control over them and you have no recourse they are not insured if they go under.   

 
You should be about 2 months in. During this time you have been studying all of Tim s free videos especially his trader check list  Trader Checklist Free Study Guide Part 1 Of 14

 How I use my accounts.  All my accounts have 2k in each of them.  I have an Interactive brokers ,etrade, TD ameriatrade, and sure trader account.  You have to have a min of 2k in each account to be able to short sale and have margin.

 
Etrade and td Ameriatrade accounts are for stocks that I am going to buy 1,500 shares or more from, why? Because they are flat rate fee's. 6.95 per trade

 
Next is my IB account they do give me margin on my money but the cost above 1000 shares make it not worth it because now I am paying 20 dollars for a trade.  500 share is usually my max. I have it for higher priced stocks 5 dollar and above. But the higher priced stocks have bigger moves usually 2 dollar min plus .005 per share I really like trading with IB account

 
Sure trader works like IB but is  expensive. But again I only buy higher priced stocks 500  to 700 shares max because they charge more per share. They give you 6:1 leverage but you need to start the process of being out by 4pm est and 4:30est totally out or they will market order your shares to get you down to 2:1 and then charge you 50 dollars. So yea you better have a plan in place. I use suretrader when I am out of pdt trades in the rest of the accounts. Also with sure trader get the desktop software it works way better than their webtrader. Get the basic package 45 dollar a month.  You don't need the rest of the nonsense. Think or swim has all the info you need. 4.95 min plus .01 per share. But I do like the ticker on sure trader tells you what market makers got executed.

 
Bottom line you are going to make a lot of mistakes you may have some big winners and some big loosers so far my max lost is 1,500 dollars. But while you are going through the process of learning you don't want brokerage accounts eating up what profits you may have had and you don't want to be with out trades when that ideal setup shows up. I just did an IB trade made 40 dollars and paid 4 dollar in commissions. It was a good win 30 cent move. But again because my account is so small it's not the big profits you will see with a 30 cent move. Remember you are learning and it takes time. You don't have the foresight like Tim Sykes has where he can start out with 6k and turn it be above 27k right way. Its going to take time to learn all this.  You need to understand the "ideal setup".  

 
Don't get a robin hood account shitty executions. Of course it's shitty is free. Lol I guess you could do overnight trades with them if you don't care about executions.

 
Look into an acorn account while you are saving your money it does help build it faster. An extra 50 dollars is an extra 50 dollars.  Especially with this market keeps going and going.

 
Bottom line you are not going to be ready to trade for a while but you do need to get all your accounts setup because it takes time. Save your money up build all your accounts up to past 2k then apply with etrade for a shorting account. Also make sure all your accounts are setup for premarket and afterhours trading. You have to apply for it. It's not standard.

 
Last but not lease do get stocks to trade software. It really makes this so much easier. Stocks to trade software needs lots or resources or you will have problems. Invest into a new computer. That has a ton of processing power and ram. I got an Alienware intel core i7-7820hk cpu @2.90ghz ram is 32gb to run STT.  Always have Think or swim running in the back ground. If you have any kind of internet issues it will go down. But I couldn't trade without Stocks to trade. Its getting better all the time.  It’s a must have with our niche we are trading.

 
As super man says practice practice practice. He makes his challenge students trade paper for a month min before trading with money. Become successful paper trading before you trade your hard earned money. You need to get the mechanics of trading down. How to buy how to sell. How to setup a limit order or a stop order. Each broker works differently. Imagine a fighter pilot, or a race car driver you need to become one with the machine before you actually get in a dog fight or a race. When you are in a trade with real money everything works different. Your heart races you are super excited. And you will make dumb mistakes you will add when you wanted to sell. You will choose the wrong stock to trade, a pop will come out of nowhere and you will put the wrong amount in. all these little problems you never thought about will happen. 

 
How I trade. I use Stocks to trade as my main and I always have think or swim running in the background. I build my watch list and put them into evernote. Then put the stocks in a watch list in stt. I then duplicate the watch list in think or swim which updates the mobile app. At all times I know what my stocks are doing. I know STT is working on a mobile app but don't know when it will come out.  

 
Good luck and remember it took dux 1,500 hundred trades to hit a million it will take you more because you are starting with such a small account.

 

later i will break down each broker of all the features i like