Buying Stock online - help...
 

Can anyone help me with buying stock online. There is one stock that I want to get into, then learn a little bit before i start really getting involved. Is ETRADE a good option to just buy one stock and sit on it for a while before I start investing?

I am a beginner and did a little research for my online broker. Tradeking was the best reviewed that worked for my needs. It has very low trade fees at $4.95 buy or sell including limits. Limits are when you enter the price you want to buy or sell at and it waits until it hits that price and then makes the buy or sell.

Also there is no minimum balance as I started off with just $200. I've made a few trades and it is very easy and not scary at all. There is also a ton of calculators and research tools FYI.

Just curious, what stock are you looking at? You can PM if you want to, I'm always looking for a good one!

I have heard people mention ThinkOrSwim as one to consider

https://www.thinkorswim.com/tos/m...yRates.tos

Some other info

http://online-stock-trading-revie...views.com/

http://www.stocktradingtogo.com/o...k-brokers/

No.

Well, ok, maybe.

Another one with lots of advertising is Scottrade. I guess they might maybe have some redeeming qualities, but $7 a trade and they aren't a direct-access broker and they sell your orders to third parties... meh.

There's some "which broker?" threads around here someplace.

I'll pimp MB Trading a bit for a pretty nice all-around. $5 a trade, very nice Futures prices if you get into that later, they pay people for trading Forex, have above-average customer service, I think the minimum account is only like $1000, direct-access broker.... You'll see they scored tops or near tops in multiple years of Barron's "best broker" reviews, if that means anything to you. They have their quirks too, though.

Something like Interactive Brokers generally has the best prices, but it's not really for people who don't trade much. Monthly fee if you don't trade anything, customer service that won't hold your hand, $10k minimum, requires a DNA sample to open an account, (well, seems like it), etc. Plus, their chart feeds suck if you need tick data, but that's another subject.

Anyway, there are various nice ones. You could probably do a lot worse than TradeKing. If you just plan on buying one thing and holding it, most anything will do. Just check the account minimums if that matters, and then check if there are any monthly fees for not trading. Like, some you can use their platform for free -- unless you don't trade that month at all. Then they charge you $50 for (not) using it.

+1 for scottrade, i think $500 minimum but no monthly charges.

I personally used Etrade and I'm a very active trader. I used Zecco for a while because cheaper commissions but I had some questionable transactions happening (and not happening) -- And the site wasn't as polished as etrade.com

I personally use ThinkOrSwim and love it. TDameritrade bought ThinkOrSwim about a year ago or so and since then has been integrating the ThinkOrSwim platform into TDameritrade. I'm not sure if you can still sign up directly for ThinkOrSwim or if you can only access it by signing up with TDameritrade first. Currently I use both the full downloadable ThinkOrSwim platform and the web-based trading capabilities offered by TDameritrade and I like them both. From my experiences with them so far, TDameritrade offers great platforms for trading, topnotch customer service, and very competitive trading fees. They also provide a whole bunch of research and other info about investments and whatnot that is supposed to be good. I don't know your personal situation, but I do not typically buy hundreds or thousands of shares of a company at one time and so my trading fees for almost all of my orders only end up being $5. This is because with ThinkOrSwim they charge trading fees 2 different ways. I copied this from their website to explain it:

For Stock orders, you have the choice of 'Per Share Commission' at $.015 per share ($5.00 minimum) OR 'Flat Fee Trading' at $9.95 per trade (market or limit orders; 5,000 shares maximum).

So I always choose to trade using "Per Share Commission" and then anything under about 660 shares traded will be cheaper than the flat fee method.

Just my 2 cents about brokers. TDameritrade was real helpful for me when i first started investing, but I have heard good things about other brokers too.

Good luck deciding!

I've used several for the last 5 yrs (including ETrade), but prefer OptionsHouse b/c of the low fees & fast trades (Zecco isn't reliable when the market is really volatile and their software cost me $ numerous times). OptionsXPress is also good, but still runs a bit higher than OptionsHouse. You'd be surprised how much of a difference the savings can make once you start regularly trading, especially if you're going to be buying/selling options.

Also, if I were you, I'd learn about The Wash Sale Rule [fairmark.com] & the various other rules before investing in anything. Otherwise, you could get a big tax surprise at the end of the year.

Thinkorswim WAS amazing, until they got bought out my TDAMERITRADE.

Now trades for new members is 10/trade as opposed to 5/trade

The mobile platform is just as good but the web platform is now slower and a lot more crowded.

Ever since they got bought out I have been looking for somewhere to transfer to.

Outdated table that can help you choose: http://slickdeals.net/forums/show...&t=1869294

I probably have no more than 10 broker accounts, but only a few are active. If you consider what happened to MF Global, it is a good idea to have a few brokers and different clearing firms.