GK, I have never looked at Commsec, but based on what you have written I thought you might be interested in a comparison with fpMarkets which I use. The relevant characteristics are listed below.
DMA.
Platform and data fee = $93.50 per month, but if your account is large enough in a month, or if you trade sufficiently often in a month, the fees are waived. My account is not particularly large, but I have never paid fees. They assess your eligibility for the fees rebate at the end of each month.
Webiress platform, which includes streaming data and the full market depth. I cannot imagine trading without streaming data and the full market depth.
Basic live charts included for no extra cost. Note that webiress is not a flash ‘arcade style’ platform with lots of fancy charts, nor a very swish user interface.
Reasonably comprehensive conditional orders for no extra cost.
Does not have guaranteed stops.
Alerts are free.
ASX trade fee = 0.1% with a $10 minimum.
CFDs available for over 6,000 stocks world wide, index CFDs, commodity CFDs, and ETFs such as BEAR for example.
Regarding charts:
fpMarkets includes basic live charts as mentioned above.
I use Bullcharts, which costs $352 pa for end of day data.
There have been a few Australian brokers that have gone belly up, Opes Prime and Sonray for example. Commsec is a large broker, but from what I have read fpMarkets is low risk as well. That is, very unlikely to suffer the same fate as Opes Prime for example. Do your own research.
