Online Trading - The Finance Forums: Financial planning, debt help, loans, mortgages, retirement and 401k, investment, and general finance discussion forums

TheAdjustment · #1 (**permalink**) 02-08-2008, 09:10 AM

Hello everyone, very nice forum/community here. I have been interested in stocks for several years now and I want to get into online trading and not have to deal with a broker. Ideally I want the ability to pick single high risk stocks and trade on a weekly or monthly basis. I want to start off with a small $500 investment and see how that goes over the course of a few months before investing larger amounts.

My question is which online trading company should I trust or would you recommend? Is E-trade or Ameritrade any good? Are the interfaces generally easy to use and not to tough to understand? I understand some terminology and I have taken accounting courses in the past. Any recommendations to which online trading firm would be incredibly helpful. I look forward to hearing all of your responses and participating this forum.

Thanks.

fl18 · #2 (**permalink**) 02-08-2008, 11:27 PM

I just wrote an article on choosing a broker in my blog below, see category Brokers (no link allowed by forum). My personal account is with TD Ameritrade. They're good and have a DRIP, but $9.99 per trade is a little high. I'm not sure about E-Trade. The recent troubles make you wonder how long they'll be around. And while you won't lose your investments, they might be locked up for a couple weeks, which could be a pain.

sailorman28 · #3 (**permalink**) 02-11-2008, 06:28 PM

I use scottrade because they seem to have the cheapest and most reliable stock trading platform. But their streaming quotes stink, so I use swiftstocks.com free streaming quotes. That has been reliable in recent months. Thats my .02 cents

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheAdjustment

Hello everyone, very nice forum/community here. I have been interested in stocks for several years now and I want to get into online trading and not have to deal with a broker. Ideally I want the ability to pick single high risk stocks and trade on a weekly or monthly basis. I want to start off with a small $500 investment and see how that goes over the course of a few months before investing larger amounts.

My question is which online trading company should I trust or would you recommend? Is E-trade or Ameritrade any good? Are the interfaces generally easy to use and not to tough to understand? I understand some terminology and I have taken accounting courses in the past. Any recommendations to which online trading firm would be incredibly helpful. I look forward to hearing all of your responses and participating this forum.

Thanks.