Is TD Ameritrade regulated?

The TD Ameritrade broker is regulated by many financial authorities and top-tier regulators in different countries like:

• SEC: Securities and Exchange Commission
• FINRA: Financial Industry Regulatory Authority
• CFTC: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission
• MAS: Monetary Authority of Singapore
• SFC: The Securities and Futures Commission in Hong Kong

Is TD Ameritrade a scam?

TD Ameritrade safety is divided into 2 parts: the safety of the broker itself and the safety of the client.

Broker safety

TD Ameritrade is considered safe as it has a long tracking record since 1975 and has survived from different financial crises. TD Ameritrade also has a banking background as its common stock is owned by the Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) of Canada.

Another part is that TD Ameritrade is listed on NASDAQ stock exchange and releases its financial statements regularly which is a big plus for TD Ameritrade.

Client protection

All TD Ameritrade clients are covered by the US investor protection scheme, called SIPC. Although SIPC does not cover all the investments, it covers notes, stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other investment company shares, and other registered securities.

On the other hand, SIPC does not cover instruments such as unregistered investment contracts, unregistered limited partnerships, fixed annuity contracts, currency, and interests in gold, silver, or other commodity futures contracts or commodity options.

The SIPC protects the TD Ameritrade clients in the following cases:

• Loss of client's cash
• Security of the broker in case anything goes wrong

The limit of ISPC protection is $500,000 including a $250,000 limit for cash.

Another part of client protection is that TD Ameritrade has an additional insurance policy for assets with a total coverage of up to $152 million. This part is additional insurance from TD Ameritrade that is not covered by SIPC.

On the other hand, TD Ameritrade does not have a negative client protection for its clients.

TD Ameritrade Legal Entities Table

TD Ameritrade offers a variety of trading instruments like forex, real stocks, ETFs, Futures, bonds, options, and IPOs.

On the other hand, TD Ameritrade does provide all of these options for the US clients only, and for the international clients, there are some of them which are available only.

There are no CFD trading in TD Ameritrade platform for all clients.

TD Ameritrade Offering of Investments

Social Trading

TD Ameritrade does support social trading on its platform. So, you can copy trades from top investors as you want via Thinkorswim. You can also follow other traders, chat with them, as well as sharing your trading experience and results.

Portfolios

TD Ameritrade does also provide two types of portfolio advisory systems:

• Selective

This is more personalized advisory from an expert. Please note that the minimum required investment amount is $25,000 to activate this service.

• Personalized

This is a much more personalized advisory option from a professional with a starting point of $250,000.

TD Ameritrade - Managed Portfolios

Countries available

TD Ameritrade is available in a lot of countries, except, but not limited to Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, UK, and the countries of the European Union.

Account types

TD Ameritrade does provide a plenty of account types with different features and capabilities.

• Standard Accounts

These are the most common account types between clients that have flexibility and access to comprehensive investment products, objective research, and have the following account options

(Individuals, Joint Tenants, Tenants in common, community property, Tenants by the Entireties, and Guardianship)

• Retirement Accounts

These types of accounts were designed to help you reach your retirement goals faster and meet your income and lifestyle needs. There are a number of types in this category which are

(Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, Rollover IRA, SEP IRA, Solo 401k, Simple IRA, and Profit Plan)

• Education Accounts

This category has a number of account types that help you save for education, at any level, choose from various state-qualified 529 Plans, tax-free Coverdell, or UGMA/UTMA accounts.

It has a number of types like:

(529 Plans, Coverdell Education Savings Account, and UGMA/ UTMA)

• Speciality Accounts

Specialty accounts make planning for the future easy. The following account types are available in this category:

(Trust, Partnership, Limited Partnership, Investment Club, Limited Liability, Sole Proprietorship, Corporate, Non-incorporated, and Small Business Plans)

• Managed Portfolios

You can save your time and effort by subscribing to one of the managed portfolios plans that helps you trade with the minimum effort. This category includes the following types:

(Selective and Personalized)

• Margin Trading

These types of accounts allow you to borrow money from TD Ameritrade and potentially increase your securities buying power by as much as 50%.

TD Ameritrade also provides a demo account with 0 fees if you want to experience the trading platform with no risk.

Min deposit

The min deposit for the TD Ameritrade is $0.

How to open an account

You can open an TD Ameritrade account in minutes through these steps:

1. Choose the account type you want to open.
2. Add your personal information, SSN, residency, and employment status.
3. Review your submitted information.
4. Check the terms and conditions section and accept them.
5. Confirm your application.

TD Ameritrade - Account opening

Trading Fees

Forex fees

TD Ameritrades does not charge commissions on trading forex pairs, but the cost of the trade is reflected in the spread and TD Ameritrade is compensated by its liquidity provider based on the volume.

Options

For online options, TD Ameritrade does charge a fee of $0.65 per contract. For the VIP clients, there are some discounts on the options based on trading volume.

Mutual Funds

TD Ameritrades has a fee of $49.99 for online no-load mutual funds.

Stock, ETFs, and Bonds

TD Ameritrade does provide free stocks, ETFs, and Bonds options on its platform.

Please note that if you decide to trade stocks in margin, you should consider that the annual margin rate for US is %9.5.

Futures

TD Ameritrade charges a fee of $2.25 fee per contract (plus exchange & regulatory fees)

Non-trading fees

• Account fee: $0
• Deposit fee: $0
• Withdrawal fees: $0 (except for the wire transfers $25)

(you can check the full withdrawal fees in withdrawal fees section)

• Inactivity fee: $0

Account Currencies

The TD Ameritrade account has only one account base currency which is USD and there’s no other option.

Notes:

• You will not be charged with conversion fees if your account has the same currency with your bank account or when you trade assets with the same currency of your account.
• If you want to avoid being charged with conversion fees, you can open a multi-currency bank account at a digital bank.

Deposit

1. Options

TD Ameritrade does provide a number of options for deposits like:

• Electronic Bank Deposit (ACH)
• Wire Transfer
• Check
• Account Transfer from Another Firm
• Physical Stock Certificates

On the other hand, TD Ameritrade does not provide deposits using electronic wallets, credit cards, or cryptocurrencies.

TD Ameritrade deposit methods

2. Fees

TD Ameritrade does not charge fees on deposit unlike a lot of other brokers.

3. Time

It takes no time funding your account as it happens immediately, but for the ACH transaction request, it might take about 2 days for transferring.

TD Ameritrade - Deposit Options

Withdrawal

1. Options

TD Ameritrade has 2 options for withdrawals: ACH or bank transfer.

Note:

The only option available for non-US clients is by bank transfers anly.

2. Fees

TD Ameritrade does not charge any fee except for withdrawals using bank transfers as they have a fee of $25.

3. Time

It takes about 2 business days to withdraw your money from TD Ameritrades.

TD Ameritrade works on two main different platforms:

• TD Ameritrade
• Thinkorswim

Both of these platforms are customized and mainly designed for trading in TD Ameritrade only but with different options and features for each. In this review, we will discuss the TD Ameritrade platform.

TD Ameritrade Trading Platform

TD Ameritrade trading application works on web, desktop, and mobile platforms. It has a beautiful user interface UI as well as a safer login method (two-step verification) which is a very good point.

Languages

TD Ameritrade is available in two main languages: English, and Chinese.

User interface (UI)

The UI of both web and mobile versions are beautiful and have easy-to-access to all features and tools in the platform.

TD Ameritrade - Mobile Platform - UI

Login and Security

TD Ameritrade has a two-step verification method for login which is counted as a plus for TD Ameritrade.

At the same time, this option is not available for the desktop version.

Searching

The searching function in the TD Ameritrade platform works fine, and you can search by the asset name.

TD Ameritrade - Mobile Platform - Search

Placing orders

There are 6 main types of orders in TD Ameritrade Platform which are:

1. Market
2. Limit
3. Stop-Market
4. Stop-limit
5. Trailing stop %
6. Trailing stop $

In addition to those 6 types, there’s other order types for the time limit.

TD Ameritrade - Mobile Platform - Place Order

Notifications and alerts

You can set notifications whatever the platform you choose.

Portfolio and Reports

TD Ameritrade has good reports and account statements in its platform with the availability to see transactions and more fundamental data.

TD Ameritrade - Mobile Platform - Account Statement

Education

You can access the educational materials on all platforms of TD Ameritrade like videos.

TD Ameritrade - Mobile Platform - Education

Platforms Comparison Table

Sources

TD Ameritrade does provide a number of searching tools from third-party providers that broaden your financial experience and helps you trade in the best possible way. Those third-party providers are Morningstar, DowJones, CFRA, and Thomson Reuters.

Trading ideas

The trading ideas provided by TD Ameritrade are about stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and fixed income instruments. From the stocks ideas section, you can get a full overview that helps you monitor your volume and see the sectors that are on the move.

TD Ameritrade - Stocks Overview

Charting

Using the Stocks Charts, you can get Spot trends and potential opportunities that may fit your investment strategy with our customizable charts. You can also use a number of indicators to help you as well.

TD Ameritrade - Stocks Chart

Newsfeed

News comes from the ‘Market Edge’ tool in which you can follow the market news and conditions to be up-to-date. Market Edge does also provide a timely information and technical analysis of the markets with reports. Unfortunately, the news feed lacks visual elements like pictures and videos.

TD Ameritrade - Market Edge - News

Fundamental data

TD Ameritrade provides also a separate fundamental data tap in which you can check the fundamental data of each asset from different sources.

TD Ameritrade - Fundamental Data

Other tools

There are a number of other useful research tools in TD Ameritrade like:

• ETF Market Center

You can use this tool to research and monitor ETFs with extensive information.

TD Ameritrade - ETF Market Center

• Screeners

This tool helps you find the right instruments for you according to predetermined screeners based on strong buys, lifecycle, highest alpha, lowest expense ratio, and more – or create your own custom screens.

Whether you are searching for stocks, options, mutual funds, or even ETFs, this tool will help you a lot.

TD Ameritrade - Screeners

• Premier List

It allows you Identify top-pick mutual funds provided by Morningstar only for the TD Ameritrade clients.

TD Ameritrade - Premier List

Options

TD Ameritrade supports customer service via phone calls for its new and existing clients as well.

Languages

TD Ameritrade supports customer service in three main languages: English, Chinese, and Spanish.

Experience

TD Ameritrade provides a webpage of top asked FAQs for fast and helpful answers as well as providing an option of phone calls for clients all over the world.

The phone support is very fast and the support team gives relevant answers with low response time.

TD Ameritrade - Customer support

TD Ameritrade provides a collection of helpful educational materials like:

• Educational videos
• Articles
• Webinars
• Seminars
• Guides

In addition to these materials, TD Ameritrade also offers a demo account in order to let its clients trade with 0% risk.

If you’ve opened an TD Ameritrade account, you are already registered at paperMoney which is an account provided by Thinkorswim and offers a number of charting and professional tools with the ability to access complex instruments like futures.

TD Ameritrade - Education

• 1. How long does it take to verify my account?
• It takes about 1 to 3 days to verify your TD Ameritrade account.
  1. Is my TD Ameritrade account protected?
• Yes, If you lose cash or securities from your account due to unauthorized activity, TD Ameritrade will reimburse you for the cash or shares of securities you lost.
  1. Can I open more than one trading account?
• Yes, you can, but some account types may be restricted from linking between devices.
  1. Does TD Ameritrade allow bot trading?
• Yes, TD Ameritrade does provide an Autotrade option which is a service that automatically enters trade recommendations you receive from TradeWise and other third-party newsletter providers into your TD Ameritrade account.
  1. Does TD Ameritrade give a bonus?
• Yes, TD Ameritrade does give a bonus up to $2,500 if you meet the following conditions:

1. You make a deposit of $250,000 or higher.
2. The deposit should be made within 60 calendar days from account opening.
3. Before June 30, 2021.
   1. Can I trade margin or option?

• Yes. As you're completing the Account Application, simply complete the margin and/or options section.
  1. Does TD Ameritrade allow scalping?
• Yes, TD Ameritrade offers scalpers three trading platforms: web browser, thinkorswim, and mobile.
  1. Is my money safe at TD Ameritrade?
• Yes, because of the following reasons:

1. The cash in your account can be held in a TD Ameritrade FDIC Insured Deposit Account (IDA).
2. Balances in an IDA are held at one or more banks (“Program Banks”), where they are insured by the FDIC against bank failure for up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank.
3. Two of the Program Banks are TD Bank, N.A. and TD Bank USA, N.A., both are affiliates of TD Ameritrade. Each bank will have separate FDIC coverage of up to $250,000 per depositor for up to $500,000 total per IDA depositor.
   1. Does TD Ameritrade have an islamic account option?

• Unfortunately, TD Ameritrade does not provide such an option on its platforms.
  1. Can I login to the same account through different devices?
• Yes, TD Ameritrade allows login to the same account from different devices.
  1. Does TD Ameritrade accept payments from third parties?
• No, as all deposits into your trading account must come from a bank account in your name.

Conclusion :

• Pros: banking background, many account types, and various trading options, and low commissions
• Cons: no negative balance protection, limited instruments for non-US clients, no credit card funding, and no islamic account option available
• Best for: beginners, and tools options
• Regulated by: SEC, FINRA, CFTC, MAS
• Headquarters: US
• Foundation year: 1975
• Min Deposit : $0
• Deposit methods: ACH, wire transfer, checks, transfers from another firm, and physical stock certificates
• Withdrawal method: ACH and bank transfers
• Deposit and withdrawal fees: $0
• Base currency: USD
• Offering of investments: forex, ETFs, stocks, options, mutual funds, bonds, and futures.
• Number of users: 11 million