Think your online stock broker is just an order-taker? Think again. When you compare online stock broker features, equity investors can often find big differences.

Gone are the days when discount brokers competed for your business on the basis of commissions alone.

Today, online stockbrokers use a variety of weapons, ranging from extended customer service hours to fancy research tools to get you to invest with them.

And those research tools are increasingly becoming more important to online investors.

“We definitely have seen a major shift in how investors use their online investor web sites,” says David Lo, director of investment services at J.D. Power and Associates, which surveys investors on their satisfaction with stockbrokers. “Now, online investors expect to get everything they need from their brokerage firm’s site.”

Common Online Broker’s Research Tools

The most common research tools are stock screeners that help you identify stocks or mutual funds. Real-time quotes are also common.

And many online brokers offer research reports and market commentary from leading organizations like Standard & Poor’s, Zacks, Morningstar and Argus.

But some online brokers go beyond the basics to offer research tools that actually help you make investment decisions.

Which ones are the best? It depends on how you want to invest.

Tools for Technical Investors

Prefer technical analysis?

TD Ameritrade has a trading tool, called StrategyDesk, that lets you build a trading strategy based on custom criteria you select.

You can even back-test your strategy using historical data to see how it would have performed in the past. Fidelity has a similar tool.

Ameritrade also has an in-house investment strategist that provides weekly market commentary and analysis.

And the company offers a Pattern Matcher tool that helps you identify stocks that meet a particular technical pattern.

TradeKing has a similar pattern recognition tool, and you can set it up to alert you by email when your favorite patterns arise.

Stock Selection Advice From Your Online Broker

Want stock selection advice approximating what an investment expert would offer? You can get that from some online brokers, too.

Charles Schwab offers its proprietary Schwab Equity Ratings service to all customers. Over 3,000 corporations are assigned an A-F rating each week, based on Schwab analysts’own research methodology.

Muriel Siebert offers an All-Star Guru Stock Scorecard, which allows you to see how a particular stock is analyzed based on eight leading stock strategies from gurus like Peter Lynch, Benjamin Graham and Martin Zweig.

Siebert also has a Guru Stock Screener that helps you find stocks these leading experts would buy, again based on their well-documented strategies.

And Fidelity has a unique technology that not only gives you recommendations from leading analysts and companies…

…but also rates those recommendations based on how well that analyst or company performed in the past.

Advice From Other Online Stock Investors

A few online brokers have taken the traditional model of investment expert providing stock selection advice and turned it completely around.

TradeKing, for example, is cultivating a vibrant online community where investors can not only trade ideas and ask questions of each other, but also follow each other’s investing styles.

The company has a Leaderboard feature where clients can choose to make their investment trades and returns public (it is not automatic). The top performers are listed, as well as what they bought, what they sold and why.

In the TradeKing Trading Activity community, investors can see what other TradeKing clients are buying and selling, as well as notes on why, plus links to blog items written about that particular security.

TradeKing also has a vibrant community of clients who blog about their trading activity. Because this area was so popular, TradeKing decided to hire some expert analysts to write blogs of their own, commenting on clients’ blog ideas, questions and investing strategies.

Zecco has similar community tools, including blogs, forums and top-performing clients over the past three months.

With so many tools and resources available to investors online, it’s easier than ever to make and execute your own financial decisions without the help of a full-service broker.

And that’s good news for investors who trade often and want to save money.

Louis Navellier’s Secret Sell-Off Weapon – This secret weapon is called Portfolio Grader, and it analyzes nearly every stock on Wall Street — including those you’re holding in your portfolio right now. This one-of-a-kind tool provides bottom-line analysis in simple letter-grade ratings from A (strong buy) to F (strong sell) — not only helping you sidestep troubled companies that could take your portfolio by surprise, but it also identifies market-beating stocks that will help boost your portfolio’s performance. Access Portfolio Grader online now — FREE!