Options House Review

Overview

Options House is one of the online options trading industries biggest brokers. Founded in 2005, they have grown with the recent surge in options trading over the last half a decade. When the company first came to market in 2006 they offered their clients the chance to trade with flat rate fees per contract, which was a breath of fresh air at the time and became their unique selling point. However, as their market share grew and other newer brokers began to mimic their business model, they decided to move to the more traditional tiered price plan. This rewarded their most loyal clients with better rates, while still allowing them to make the profit necessary to remain competitive, innovative and responsive enough to maintain their position as a market leader.

First Impressions

Options House offer a clean, stylish and easily navigable website, which is a joy to use. A wide selection of tools such as; a risk viewer, call spread investigators, covered call investigators, put spread investigators, a probability calculator, a P&L calculator, stock screener, volatility charts, trade generators and of course all the charts, news and stock quotes you will need for your every day trading.

They seem very keen to let their users know of their successes and reputation within the industry, and rightly so. Options House have been voted the best broker for options trading by Barron’s in 2009, 2010, 2011 and recently took the crown for a fourth successive year in 2012.

Pricing

As we mentioned earlier, Options House are one of the many brokers now operating on a tiered price plan. The price you pay will depend entirely on how many contracts you purchase. Options contracts will cost you $1 each, when purchased in quantities of five or more. If you’re trading more than 10 contracts then they also offer the option of paying $8.50 per transaction with an additional $0.15 for each contract, which will make you quite a saving over the long term. This actually puts them head and shoulders above the majority of their competition, which they quite proudly show on their rates page in a series of comparison graphs.

Platform

The trading platform itself is one of the most efficient in the industry. With all of the previously mentioned tools on offer and the ability to make trades in just a few clicks, regardless of their complexity, Options House have created a comprehensive package that will be more than good enough for traders of all levels. Infact, the only thing that we can really mark them down on is the lack of level II quotes, which may frustrate some day traders who prefer to have all their information in one place.

Conclusion

A superb brokerage. Their fees and commission are the lowest around, the site is well laid out and most importantly they know what they’re doing. I have yet to hear a horror story involving Options House, which is quite rare in itself! Judging from what I have seen over the last few days though, that shouldn’t really surprise me. They’re truly a cut above, in every way.