Discount Broker for Beginning Investor?

Question

I am interested in starting to invest my money. I was wondering: which company is the best online discount broker? I only have a few thousand dollars to invest (as I have only recently begun to work full-time). I'm looking for low commissions and account fees primarily and research tools and portfolio guidace secondarily.

Answer 1

I would recommend Scottrade. Grant it, I am a little bias, but Scottrade's reputation and service speaks for itself, and you can open an account with as little as a $500 deposit.

Also, Scottrade does not charge for inactive accounts or for account maintenance, and there are no minimum number of transactions (trades) required. Scottrade has a flat rate ($7) for most online market and limit equity orders, regardless of your trade frequency, account balance, or the number of shares in a transaction. You can compare the commissions/fees of several brokerage firms at: http://www.scottrade.com/online_broker_comparison/discount_brokerage_comparison.asp .

I hope you find this information useful. Please let me know if you have any additional questions. I'd be happy to help.

Scottrade
www.Scottrade.com
1-800-619-7283

Answer 2

Sogoinvest.com is a good place for low commissions. $1 for the first 90 days and then only $3 thereafter. How soon do you want to use the money? If you are investing for retirement, seriously consider an IRA (TIAA-CREF.ORG) or look very closely into your company's 401K plan, if applicable. If you're investing for a new home a 5 year old IRA will allow you to use $10,000 tax free for the purchase. (if first time home-buyer) Otherwise this is a good site for cheap trades. The research portion of this site is bad if not terrible, but there is plenty of free, good, research out there. Check out finance.yahoo.com. Click around, learn the site.

Answer 3

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

Barron's has a great article on brokerages that they publish each year. (Latest one was in March 6, 2006, though now there’s a 2007 one. I'll try to get you the link). Kiplinger does one too.

Here’s the link to the Barron’s article.
http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1550280182488.html

Here’s the link to the Kiplinger’s July 2006 article which isn’t bad either.
http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2006/07/brokers.html


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, I'd recommend one of the first three, but all are very good. Cheapest probably is scottrade (of the larger online firms). Yes there are cheaper like interactivebrokers, but you'll have to get used to their software based platform (which is doable). They're only about $1/contract on options!

Brokerages like Fidelity are horrible for anyone with any decent experience. Their fills are bad, their page showing positions is laughable, and a lot of times their reps just don’t understand anything beyond a simple buy/sell.

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! But as I said, for settlement, that shouldn't change by changing brokers.

And if there are particular things that are most important to you (such as executions, cust svc, cheapest trade, 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 4

If you don't know what you are doing you should change your priorities. Pay someone who does know and pay a management fee and invest in mutual funds...

Dont fool around with individual stocks.

Dont be too aggressive.. it sounds like this is a lot of money to you and you may need it in an emergency

Pay a broker's fee and get some guidance in the art of diversification... you'll spend an extra 100$ and save a $1000 in errors.

buy some books and learn... later on you can take a more hands on approach

Answer 5

I like Ameritrade pretty well, but you need to look at fees. I don't pay any because I am a preferred client, but your acct balance is too low for that. As far as tools, Yahoo Finance is better than any of them. If you think you are going to be moving money in and out of brokerage account regularly, just put it in a money market and forget about stocks for now.

Answer 6

The best place to look for this kind of discount info is SearchAllDeals. Just start with a search term like "Discount Broker".

Answer 7

www.schwab.com has great people on the phone for free if you need to talk to a live person. Their commission rates are a little higher, but for anyone but the most active trader, so what? The support is worth it. Remember: the loss on one mistake because of something you don't understand can wipe out ten years of commission savings.

Answer 8

Scott Trade- no maintance fee, $7 per trade in stocks. It has pretty good research too.

Answer 9

scottrade by far but i like the advice one gave about not going nuts on stocks invest wisely.

Answer 10

E-TRADE is good after you learn the ropes or does one ever learn.