I want to invest in stocks, trading and option trading, but i'm now starting out and have no, or little experience. I would like to know which broker I should join to do online transactions. Thank you.
130563
I like Scottrade.  $7 market orders, fast executions, good customer service when I need it, which hasnt been often.  Their website provides a lot of good research information.
672497
I have scottrade. 7 dollars are for real time trades. the sucky thing about scottrade is now when you want to deposit more money into your account, you cant do it electronically over the internet from your bank account directly to scottrade, you have to either mail them a check or go to a scottrade office
535844
I too was in the same boat as you a few years back. After having discussed this with several professionals and traders, I was recommended the following and support their thoughts as well:\n\n1) Options As a Strategic Investment by Lawrence McMillan\n     The book is heralded as the "The Bible" for option traders. It comes complete with explanations, charts, and commentary; a complete package and stand-alone volume. It is often called the "OSI book."\n\n2) Option Volatility and Pricing by Sheldon Natenburg\n   This particular book delves more into the structure and pricing of the option rather than the many applications as OSI covers.\n\nConclusion: Anything by the above two authors is a safe bet to be a complete study tool in learning about options. From beginning investors wanting to know the basics through the advanced traders who want to brush up on concepts and application, you are bound to be satisfied.
23983
Open a "Complete" account.  It is their best product and is by far the best inthe industry.  Trades cost 13.99 and everything else is free.  No other fees.  ATM fees are refunded.  It is awesome.  Highly recommended.
22812
You can go to the company's home page and find out if they have direct investing options.  You see some companies allow you to buy stock directly through them McDonalds is one such company.  Buying common stock this way allows you to save money on brokerage fees.  Some companies sell for a small fee for 1 or two dollars and others for free. \n\nYou can also talk to a financial advisor.  Your local bank is a good place to start.  You can also find a financial advisor the American Express.  You can also open an account with one of the online trading companies.  However, research these carefully/.  I also suggest setting up a special bank account if you are going to do this.  This will prevent someone from using you online account to completely wipe out your savings.  \n\nOne last thing remember the market is an extremely volatile and you need to research any company prior to investing in it.  And any investment you make may bring larger rewards are extremely large disapointments.\n\nGood Luck!
611007
I use http://www.sharebuilder.com\nThey are easy to use, offer investment facts and education, and are cheap.  I can check my stocks on line at any time for free.\nOne-time trades are only $4 each trade.  (No matter how many shares in the same company)\nUsually the fee is "per trade", not "per transaction".  Many sites do not have maintenance fees.  You would pay taxes only IF you made money off of the investments.  Unless you were HUGELY successful, this would not be much.  You DO have to report the money sitting there.\nThe other fees involve what you do with the money.  If you just keep re-investing the money you make in the same trade, no fees.  If you withdraw $$, there is a fee.
477017
There are a lot of good brokererages depending on what you like and how you trade.\n\nBarron's Online has a great article on brokerages that they publish each year. (I'll try to find you the link for the March 6,2006 article)\n\nFor basic stuff, E*Trade, Ameritrade, and Scottrade are sufficient. For more complex trades, I'd recommend Optionsxpress, ThinkorSwim, or interactivebrokers. \n\nBased on what you put in your question on wanting affordable w/o inactivity fees, I'd recommend optionsxpress since they have no minimum activity that you're required to do.  Further, they have some great strategy scans and a decent virtual trading platform to practice on.\n\nBrokerages like Fidelity are horrible for anyone with any decent experience.  Though they do have decent research stuff.\n\nBut for research, there are SOOO many places to find good stocks.\n\nSo, decide what's important to you as a trader and compare the brokers! You can use the article, or go to each website as they all seem to have comparison charts! \n\nAnd if there are any other particular things that you want to mention as being most important to you (such as executions, cust svc, cheapest trade - which you mentioned, flexibility on allowing you to do certain types of trades, stop and stop limit orders, contingent orders, great graphing, what if scenarios, training, etc), I'll be glad to help discuss this with you too!\n\nIf you have any questions, let me know.\n\nHope that helps!
395763
ok, I could never have enough room here to tell you everything you need to know so I'm going to tell you where to go instead...\n\nyahoo.finance.com - read this everyday and try to keep up with stock prices and movements as well as news and how the news affects the stock price - after a few weeks of doing this you'll start to see where you want to put money\n\nwatch CNBC on TV - it's basic cable and you'll know it because it's that channel that you always skip over because you don't understand what the hell all those numbers on there mean and what they're talking about at all...\n\nall you need to start before you go on and start looking at yahoo.finance is that the stock market is the name for when buyers and sellers of stocks are matched up - it can get a little technical and you don't need to worry about exactly how it works BUT you do need to know that stock prices will vary day after day and when you begin following their movements on the price charts like I told you, then you will begin to understand everything you really need to know...
519943
Scottrade is $7 to buy, $7 to sell (overall great).  sharebuilder is great if you buy and hold for long periods of time (in the $20 a month plan, the first 20 automatic investments a month are free, and about $11 to sell).  I would go with scottrade overall, though (i buy from sharebuilder and also have scottrade but i am too lazy to move all my assets to scottrade(my dad also has scottrade and loves it)).
664896
Anytime you buy stock or sell stock, you incur a fee. Different companies charge different fees. The on-line no frills services charge very little. I would only use Charles Schwab, one of the highest rated low cost firms.  One trade means you purchase a certain number of shares at a certain price. Example; I buy 100 shares of HP at one time for one price, I pay one fee for that. If you buy from 5 different entities, that would be 5 different trades.\n\n If you are new to investing, you need to fully understand what you are doing. One of the best ways to learn is check out Suze Orman's books on wealth, money and investing in the library. She is the best and really spells things out in simple terms, and she's honest, rare in that line of work.  She has a website too.\n\nYou really need to understand that you invest only what you are willing to loose, because the stock market is very volitile.  In fact, this past week, it took a major nose dive because the feds were saying we are close to inflation and they are raising rates. That plus other things affect the market, it's very quirky...actually bordering on silly at times given the fluctuations and reasons for them.
431573
Barrons publishes a great article on the online brokers every year.  This years was from March 6th.  That's one source.  \n\nUnfortunately, I don't recall seeing too much else other than what I've seen in the news.  \n\nHope that helps some.
64316
If you have some money and you buy several per month, use Interactive Brokers.  Their commission is $1 per trade.  If you don't do about 8 trades per month, though, you get hit with low activity fees.  You could buy several in one month and then transfer the stocks to a discount brokerage that doesn't charge inactivity fees.\n\nIf you don't have much money, some companies will sell to individuals, but watch out for fees.  Check the investor relations tabs on their Web sites. \n\nA last resort is sharebuilder.com.  They won't buy even shares and it's expensive to sell, but it's cheap to buy there.
220694
The question has several answers depending on how it is interpreted. For example, mutual funds allow you to buy shares that track the S&P 500. One might consider buying shares in one of those mutal funds as buying shares on the stock market. Fidelity and Vanguard both sell these and others.\n\nIf on the other hand you are talking about an on line stock broker, there are quite a few. Again Fidelity which I think is excellent, TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, Scottrade, and  others.
589536
All the brokerages you listed are expensive ( relatively ) in their commissions, especially if you're going to be trading stocks, often, instead of just buying funds and leave them for a while.\n\nIf this be the case, you will be better off, exploring other deep-discount brokerages...such as E*Trade, TD Ameritrade etc.\n\nIf you have sufficiant funds in your Rollover IRA ( > $50K for E*Trade ) the commission per trade is lot less than what you will pay in your list of brokerages.  I think it's $9.99 or something along that line, with almost all brokerages, per trade.\n\nThe commission is something that you should consider. Also, some of these companies charges few cents per share. Only the first 1000 shares are covered by their flat fee. Anything above that limit, you pay additional CENTS per share.\n\nAll the tools - charts, portfolio manager, research tools etc...are all kinda standard all over the place.\n\np.s.\nSince you're rolling over and NOT THRU' YOUR COMPANY 401(k) anymore...There is no more free lunch. You will pay $$$ per trade..So, give it some thought
348025
Your question reveals the fact that you are a complete newbie with very weak basic, fundamental knowledge in the stock markets and is about to do something you might regret for a very long time.\n\nInvesting or trading the stock markets never start from asking how to buy a certain stock (lets not even get into why you want to buy SIRI in the first place because you won't be able to answer why either.)... it starts from adequate investment and trading knowledge. There are quite a number of things you need to learn before you can even start thinking of the stock markets ...\n\n1. You need to understand how the stock market works and what it is exactly about.\n\n2. You need to know what are the different styles of trading in stocks and shares. \n\n3. You need to read about why so many people lose their shirts in the stock markets so that you can avoid their mistakes and also decide if this is a risk you want to take.\n\nFor all these issues and more, you can read about them from some of the articles that I wrote at http://www.mastersoequity.com/articles.htm \n\nAfter you are adequately armed with the basic concepts and ideas, you need to know how to find profitable stocks to trade or invest in. You can do that the easy way by subscribing to stock pick services (example http://www.stockpickmaster.com ) or you can learn to use charting tools and softwares to find stocks with parameters that you can pre-define. (example http://www.worden.com ) \n\nAll in all, investment and trading is a lifelong education and non stop learning. No one is ever done learning and catching up with changes in the markets. \n\nIf you care to read about how I went from completely broke to retired millionaire trading stocks and options by 28 years old, you can go to http://www.mastersoequity.com/\n\nRemember, the slogan "Just Do It", Just won't do for the stock markets. If profiting in the stock markets is as simple as buying a single stock , then why are so many people still poor?\n\nAfter you have all the above mentioned knowledge, you need to ask the following golden questions before you can decide whether a stock is worth buying or not :\n\n1. Why are you of the opinion that this stock will rise?\n\n2. Is your opinion valid in the first place?\n\n3. When are you expecting it to rise? Can you hold on for that period of time or longer?\n\n4. What is your expected entry price? After what price would your expected profit margin be too thin to enter upon?\n\n5. Where is your expected stop loss point? What is your stop loss point based on? Where will you tell yourself that it is time to take a loss and get out?\n\n6. Where is your expected profit taking point? What is your profit taking point based on? \n\n7. Does the way you are buying the stock allow you to hold on until your expected profit taking point?\n\n8. How much of your money should you dedicate to this one trade?\n\n9. What is the level of primary, secondary and idiosyncratic risk you are undertaking when deciding how much of your fund to use?\n\n10. What is your cashflow need? Does your cashflow needs allow you to hold the full lifetime of the stock?\n\nAfter you are able to answer all these questions confidently, THEN you are ready to... PAPER TRADE your stock strategy. Yes, even at this point, you are NOT READY to trade for real. You should trade on PAPER for at least 6 months and become consistently successful BEFORE you take your stock strategy into real life.\n\nThen.. you are ready to start... but there is still no guarantee of success as paper trading is very different from real trading. You will need another maybe 1 year or 2 trading very little money and be consistently successful BEFORE you are ready to increase your stakes.\n\n\nSo, as you can see, success in the stock markets is not easy at all the the less knowledge you have, the more risk you undertake.  I lost hundreds of thousands in the stock markets before I become successful.\n\nTake heed and good luck.\n\n\n\n
587614
TD Ameritrade is the best. I have used for years. The interface are trader friendly and portfolio information are shown in details. I buy penny stocks so the $9.99 fixed commission for unlimited shares is good for me. No maintenance fees.\n\nIf you are going to buy penny stocks, you need to be careful about the commission. Search the fine prints.\n\nFor Scottrade, see fine prints: "For stocks priced under $1, add 1/2% of the principal value to the commissions shown. " You will end up to pay more than $7.\n\nEtrade recently reduced the commission with fixed commission for unlimted shares so it is good for penny stock traders too. But I don't like portfolio web page because it is very confusing and do not show all the information I want to see.
74618
I'm not sure what you are asking for, but I'll tell you the meaning of the options.\nLet's use as an option example Yahoo Strike 30 March and say trading at $.65 an option and you are going to buy/sell one contract\n\nBuy to open- Buy to open is to buy this option and for 1 contract you would pay $65 and $8 transaction fee. \n\nSell To Close- You can not do this first, you need to own and option first. So, if you bought the yahoo option and it is now worth $.9 You would sell it and make $90 $-8 transaction fee.\n\nNow what I think you are interested in is the opposite\n\nSell to open- means that you sell this option and you will recieve $65 in your account - transaction fee and you could do whatever you want with your money.\n\nBuy to close is simply to buy back your option. If you think the option will expire worthless and do not want to buyback, then you may not need to do this action. \n\nHope I was some help.\n\nALSO VERY IMPORTANT. If you have sold more than one option contract and it is likely to be exercised, buy back the option. Because buy back is only $7 +1.25(per contract) per transaction, but getting exercised is $8 per contract.