What GreenWick is
GreenWick is a free resource for people who trade small-cap stocks — the low-float, high-volatility names that move 30%, 80%, sometimes 200% in a session, and that most mainstream broker comparison sites are not built to evaluate.
Almost every “best broker” list online is written for buy-and-hold investors. They rank on things like fractional shares, retirement accounts and research reports. None of that tells you whether you can get a locate on a hard-to-borrow $2 stock at 9:34am, what Level 2 depth actually costs, whether hotkeys are configurable, or how each broker treats a small account now that the $25,000 pattern day trader rule is being phased out.
Those are the questions this site exists to answer.
Who it’s for
GreenWick is written for the momentum trader working a small account: someone scanning for relative volume and float, trading gappers and intraday runners, who needs fast fills, real routing and access to short locates — and who is trying to work out which broker and which tools actually support that, without paying for the lesson.
If you are building a long-term portfolio of index funds, this is not the site for you, and we will say so rather than take your click.
How we score brokers
Every broker review on this site is scored out of 10 across five criteria, weighted for how small-cap day traders actually trade:
- Execution speed and routing — direct market access and route selection, or payment for order flow? Can you choose your ECN?
- Fees and Level 2 data value — commission structure, platform fees, depth-of-book costs, and what gets waived at volume.
- Short locate availability — is there real hard-to-borrow inventory, is the fee shown before you commit, and can you sell unused locates back?
- Platform and hotkey reliability — configurable hotkeys, stability under load, and how the platform behaves on a halt and resume.
- Small account accessibility — minimum deposit, PDT treatment, and whether the account is realistically usable below $25,000.
The sub-scores are published on every review so you can see where a score came from and disagree with our weighting if your priorities differ.
What we check on every review
For each broker we verify the minimum deposit, account types offered, commission and platform fee structure, Level 2 and market data costs, order routing model, short locate availability, regulatory registration and investor protection scheme, and which countries the entity accepts. Regulatory details are taken from the regulator or the broker’s own disclosures — so a Canadian broker is checked against CIRO and CIPF, a U.S. broker against FINRA and SIPC, and an offshore entity against whichever authority actually licenses it.
Every review carries the date it was last verified. Brokers change terms constantly, and a fee table with no date on it is not information you should trust — on this site or any other.
How we make money
GreenWick is free to read and carries no display advertising. It is funded by referral fees from some of the brokers and tools we cover. It costs you nothing extra.
The rules we hold ourselves to are simple: no company can pay for a place in our rankings, no company can pay to have criticism removed, we cover brokers we earn nothing from when they are the right answer, and every review carries a real list of drawbacks. The full explanation is on our Affiliate Disclosure page.
What we don’t do
We do not give financial advice, we are not registered with any financial regulator, we do not run a trading room or sell alerts, we do not manage money, and we will never tell you what to buy. We publish education and research so you can make your own decision. Day trading is genuinely high risk and most people who attempt it lose money — please read our Disclaimer and Risk Warning before you act on anything here.
Get in touch
Corrections, questions, or a broker term we have got wrong — we want to hear about it. Email hello@greenwick.trade or use the contact page. We read everything.