What is the best tradeing platform / company for a small investor?

Question

im looking for a platform/company that will be easy for me (a sophomore in high school) to use and will give me the most information possible, also a company that provides cheap trades with no maintainance or inactivity fees. im just looking to invest a relativly small amount of money (around 1000 dollars)

Answer 1

There are a lot of good brokererages depending on what you like and how you trade.

Barron'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)

For basic stuff, E*Trade, Ameritrade, and Scottrade are sufficient. For more complex trades, I'd recommend Optionsxpress, ThinkorSwim, or interactivebrokers.

Based 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.

Brokerages like Fidelity are horrible for anyone with any decent experience. Though they do have decent research stuff.

But for research, there are SOOO many places to find good stocks.

So, 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!

And 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!

If you have any questions, let me know.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

try forex ... currency exchange... however im not sure if u should be 18 or not www.forex.com

its easier and therearent ant fees.. just the pricing ofthe currencies ... good luck
open up a demo account with fak money and try it .. it should give u an idea