FirstradeReviews of firstrade.com

Trusted, but not top-tier. I have been using Firstrade since 2020. Deposits and withdrawals are not very convenient for me from Malaysia. The trading conditions are acceptable, but it does not offer overnight trading. Overall, I consider it an average broker.

Today, 27 Jan 2022, at about 02:40 pm US Eastern, the Positions page of Firstrade stopped updating. As a result it is not possible to see the current value of any of the positions. As you can imagine this is an important factor when deciding whether or not to buy or sell shares. Any broker has these basic functions it has to get right: 1. Show the current and correct value of the cash position, any other open position and the total value 2. During trading hours show the above using updated market quotes. This has now been going on for over 30 minutes without Firstrade acknowledging it on their web site. I sent several emails marked as "URGENT - BUT" in the subject line and included screenshots to illustrate the problem. The only response I have is an automated reply stating the actual reply will take 1 or 2 business days. This is the first time in 4 years this has happened. As other reviewers noted, a few days ago the cash balance was not correct on that day. Firstrade acknowledged that in the form of a notice on the web site. The issue was resolved the next day. It looks as if software updates are rolled out without sufficient quality practices in place. In summary: Firstrade is certainly suitable for investments where it is not important to have continously updated quotes, i.e., long-term investments where it doesn't really matter whether you check positions frequently. However, Firstrade is not suitable for other investments or trades such as leveraged ETFs, options or future. I'd judge the risk being too high because of the quality issues in their systems.