SmartMoney's 2009 Broker Survey

Best: Fidelity
Worst: SogoTrade

This year's race came down to Fidelity, Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade. Together the trio has more than double the number of customers of the remaining firms in our survey combined, and each has a smorgasbord of offerings, including municipal bonds, certificates of deposit and access to initial public offerings. In the end, Fidelity led the pack with its impressive mix of more than 16,000 mutual funds, many of which don't carry transaction fees.

The firms with the fewest mutual funds generally had the slimmest pickings when it came to the other investment products. Just2Trade and ShareBuilder, for example, offered fewer mutual funds than the competition, and both lacked corporate, municipal and U.S. Treasury bonds. Zecco and SogoTrade carried exchange-traded funds but not much else on our wish list. SogoTrade scored the lowest overall because it was the only firm without a single mutual fund offering. The company says it's focused on active traders who come to the firm for its low commissions on stock trades.