Setting up a brokerage account and a chance at investing does seem interesting and full of opportunities. However, it is essential to make the right choice while choosing your brokerage firm. While the right brokerage firm can provide you with well informed, expert advice, a wrong choice can lead to huge, unfortunate losses. Here are a few top firms you can rely upon:

• TD Ameritrade charges a trade commission of $6.95 per trade and needs no account minimum. The firm is known to offer one of the best customer services available along with an advanced trading platform for your brokerage account.
• ï Charles Schwab charges a trade commission of $4.95 per trade. The reduced commission price of Charles Schwab made it a strong competition to its peers. However, it does require you to maintain an account minimum of $1000. The customer service provided is just as good as TD Ameritrade.
• E*Trade charges a trade commission of $6.95 per trade and needs the account minimum to be $500. You should be making this your choice if you have your foot set in areas apart from stock trading. You will be open to choose from a wide variety of investing products from ETFs, mutual funds, stocks, bonds, futures, and options trading.
• Options Xpress charges a trade commission of $4.95 per trade and needs no account balance. The services provided by this firm are quite similar to the ones provided by E*Trade. A comparison of trading costs of the investments you might plan to trade often can give you a start at making a choice.
• Merrill Edge and Fidelity Investments take up the next place. They charge a trade commission of $6.95 and $4.95 respectively. Merrill Edge requires no account balance while the latter needs an account minimum of $2,500. They are known for their wide range of research, analysis, and accuracy.

A reasonable choice can be made from one’s requirements while opening a brokerage account. Vigorous comparisons of various brokerage firms available in the market will help in making a choice that would be tailor-made to suit you.