Lightspeed

Lightspeed is a brokerage firm that caters to active and high-volume traders rather than casual investors. Instead of building one app for everyone, it offers a lineup of professional-grade trading platforms — such as Lightspeed Trader, along with access to third-party platforms like Sterling and Eze EMS (formerly RealTick) — and traders pick the one that fits how they work.

A brokerage is the company that holds your trading account, routes your orders to exchanges, and handles the money and shares moving in and out. What sets a firm like Lightspeed apart from a mainstream retail broker is the focus: fast order execution, direct access to exchanges and market makers (called direct market access), detailed order types, and pricing structures built around frequent trading rather than occasional buy-and-hold investing.

The nuance beginners miss is that "Lightspeed" isn't a single piece of software — it's an account that can plug into different platforms, each with its own look, fees, and learning curve. Someone told to "get Lightspeed" still has to choose a platform, and that choice affects things like monthly platform fees, hotkey setup, and how order tickets are laid out. It's also aimed at people already comfortable with terms like Level 2 quotes and order routing; it is not designed as a first stop for a brand-new investor.

Because these platforms are built for speed and volume, they typically come with commission structures (often per-share rather than a flat fee) and platform fees that only make sense once trading frequency is high enough to justify them.