tastyworks Broker Review 2021 – Is it good?

CONTENT

• General Information & First Impressions
• Fund and Account Security
• Registration at tastyworks
• The Trading Accounts
• tastyworks’ Trading Platform
• Funding and Pricing
• Trading Products at tastyworks
• Leverage and Other Crucial Trading Information
• Customer Service at tastyworks
• Conclusion

General Information & First Impressions

Tastyworks is a US-based online brokerage that’s still relatively new, with a start in 2017. However, it already has a solid reputation behind it, and many traders already know about it. Nevertheless, we always like to provide a fresh and current perspective of online brokerages as the online trading world evolves rapidly. As a part of our ongoing mission to present you with the best online trading options, we looked into tastyworks. As such, our tastyworks review will help you determine whether the broker suits your trading needs.

Right from the start, you’ll notice that tastyworks looks quite a bit different from most online brokerages. While most brokers go for a professional and minimalistic visual design, tastyworks is more casual. However, we don’t feel like it works very well since it looks like they’re trying too hard to relate to younger investors. Casual brokerages can look fine, but tastyworks just looks like someone googled hipster and plastered pictures across the website.

But while the broker does look somewhat unseemly according to our tastes, we won’t hark on that too much. Visuals aren’t that important for broker websites, and functionality is much more vital. And tastyworks.com runs fine, with no lag and solid website sectioning. They don’t throw all the info at you, meaning it’s less likely for newer traders to get overwhelmed. The exact information on the website is a bit lackluster, but we’ll get to that later in our tastyworks review.

The broker is off to a decent start, and although it didn’t amaze us, it looks competent at the very least. With the initial impressions out of the way, we can move on to tastyworks’ more relevant properties.

Fund and Account Security

One area where tastyworks really shines is account and fund safety. It’s fairly simple to secure user accounts, get 2FA and some basic web security protocols. Enable encryption on your website and it’s improbable for any customer to lose access to their account unless it’s their own fault. Why most brokers don’t do that is beyond us, but tastyworks does.

As for fund security, the broker has three regulatory bodies, FINRA, SIPC, and NFA. And while the latter two aren’t regulators in the legislative sense, they still lend credibility to tastyworks.  We checked the validity of their licenses, and it all checks out, meaning it’s unlikely that the broker is malicious. However, that picture of air-tight security may not be an entirely accurate one.

Namely, tastyworks is a textbook example of why you should always check broker reputation as well as technical security. Many users have voiced their discontent at what seem to be malicious practices coming from tastyworks. Some users complain about hidden fees and massive withdrawal charges. Others complain about misplaced orders, which is unlikely but not unheard of.

Granted, some of these reviews were pretty poorly written, so take them with a grain of salt. However, another company acquired tastyworks in June 2021, so their practices might have changed. Professional oppinions across the web also seem not to value tastyworks too highly because of that.

One last thing that’s somewhat related to security the broker’s communication. There’s no phone option, and there’s even no email on tastyworks’ website, which is bizarre. They also have links to their socials on the contact us page, but their Twitter account, for example, is down. Many users have complained about the company’s unresponsiveness, and we’re inclined to believe them. Needless to say, that’s a major blow to tastyworks’ trustworthiness.

Registration at tastyworks

The registration at tastyworks is about what you’d expect from a broker without a minimum deposit requirement. That’s to say that you need to hand in a lot of info right away since your account is technically always active. That leads to a relatively slow process, where you need to wait for verification before doing anything. That’s even more of a pain with the broker’s slow and inefficient communication we mentioned earlier in our tastyworks review. It leads to poor user experience and is just plain frustrating.

The Trading Accounts

As with most US brokers, tastyworks’ different accounts don’t actually change your core experience. They just shift who can use the account and what they can utilize it for. There are Individual, Joint, Trust, Retirement, and International versions. We can assume they all shift fees and pricing a little bit, but none change the core experience.

For beginners, that’s great as they won’t need to make massive deposits to get all the features the broker has. For more serious investors, the lack of account specialization and luxury features might be a deterrent. Trading account preferences largely come down to personal preferences, so it’s nearly impossible to judge them accurately. However, we do believe there were better ways for the broker to organize things.

tastyworks’ Trading Platform

Sadly, tastyworks doesn’t have a demo account or a functional platform test in place. As such, we can only take tastyworks’ word and outside source information to see what the platform does.

And in most ways, it seems like a straightforward trading tool that aims more towards beginners than experienced traders. That’s in line with tastyworks’ overall service, as it seems like it wants to attract newer traders.

One of the features the broker most prominently advertises is the quick roll. That function lets you roll open positions into the expiration cycle following them via right-click. Beyond that, the platform boasts some nice QOL features that make trading and investing easier for retail investors. Analytically, it doesn’t seem to do much beyond some graphs and charts, and trader inspiration – as the broker calls it.

Overall, tastyworks.com seems to have prioritized making the platform accessible and intuitive rather than analytically complex. And while that may not be everyone’s cup of tea, we feel like it’s entirely reasonable. Not every broker needs to require high knowledge and trading skill. It’s completely fair for tastyworks to be a broker aimed at casual trading, and its platform reflects that.

Funding and Pricing

The pricing at tastyworks is neat on paper but might work differently in practice. Namely, they have a comprehendable outline of how much they charge for opening and closing positions on each asset. And if that were it, we’d say tastyworks is one of the more beneficial brokers pricing-wise. However, there’s a little asterisk there that says they can add exchange, regulatory, or clearing fees. That ties in with what we mentioned earlier in our tastyworks review, of how users complained about hidden charges.

It may be that the damaged users just didn’t read the fine print, or the broker may be up to something even more malicious. Tastyworks also added a table comparing its prices to other brokerages. We feel like that’s distasteful, and the data is undoubtedly cherrypicked to falsely improve tastyworks’ appearance.

As for funding, the info is quite limited. Here’s also a good place to mention that tastyworks.com places most of its important information in the help center. As far as we could see, the three methods of depositing money into your account are ACH, checks, and bank wire transfers. That clashes with the broker’s identity of being quick, simple, and useful for casual investors. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any info on how long the payments take to process.

Trading Products at tastyworks

Frustratingly, the exact info on the broker’s assets is difficult to find. The website is well organized as an introduction, but anything beyond that is difficult to locate. Nonetheless, we can see that the broker’s trading library isn’t very vast, but it does cover most major asset categories. The asset classes at tastyworks.com are as follows:

• US-Exchange-Listed Stocks and Options
• Cryptocurrencies
• Small Exchange Futures Products
• CME Futures
• Micro E-Mini Futures
• Options on Futures

Customer Service at tastyworks

Customer service and overall communication have to be among the most significant deterrents to using tastyworks. If a broker structures itself as a casual and quick investing experience, that’s alright. But in that case, it needs to be consistent. If there’s a major holdup in one area, the entire experience comes crashing down.

As we said earlier in our tastyworks review, the broker doesn’t even have an email or phone on its website. That’s shady and downright unprofessional, as if nobody responds on live chat, you’re entirely stranded. We had hoped they’d at least take the approach of some other brokers and move their customer support to social media, but no.

Conclusion

While tastyworks may have had some merit in the past, we’d say its current state is outdated. The fees and charges can vary and cause massive and unexpected costs, which can throw off your trading calculation. The security is better on paper than it is in practice, and many users seem unhappy with how tastyworks treats them. And further along that line, the communication is abysmal, with the broker barely having any contact info.

All those negatives make the positives, such as an accessible trading platform and simple trading experience, worth very little. Namely, the downsides actively negate everything that the broker does well. That makes tastyworks a middle-of-the-pack broker, which is especially unfortunate since it works in the US. The US has one of the most competitive online brokerage markets, so it’s not like potential tastyworks users have a shortage of options.

If you’ve been following along with our tastyworks review, you’ll have noticed our opinion isn’t stellar. The broker is secretive, abstruse, and downright unprofessional at times. We don’t feel like that’s acceptable, so even with its solid qualities, it doesn’t pull through. For most traders, it shouldn’t be difficult to find a broker that provides a better service.