internet brokers

[chopchoi]

I'm l;ooking to open an online brokerage account. I've never had a brokerage account before, and am unsure what to look for. I know that a low price per trade and no maintence fees are good, though. Is there anything else I should be looking for?

Also, Scottrade offers a $7 trade and no maint. fee. Are they reputable? Does anyone know of anyone else who is reputable and offers a better price?

[lastsamurai]

I like tdwater house. Try to look for an online brokerage where you could put in orders through an 800 number too.

[Sniper]

If you are simply looking to open an account so that you can make an occasional trade and invest your poker winnings, then any of the major online brokers will do.

If you are looking to daytrade, then make sure you get a direct access broker.

[michiganfan9]

Personally I think that scottrade is the best. It's $500 to open an account which is the cheapest of all. And the $7 trades no matter how many shares was very appealing to me. It's just my opinion.

[FMThe2nd]

I use InteractiveBrokers.com. They charge a penny a share to trade stocks with a minimum charge of $1. The interface is pretty good, as it's a java client that shows the real-time bid and ask on whatever stock is on your screen. I believe there is a $10 inactivity fee if you don't make more than 10 trades a month or something.

If you regularly trade more than 700 shares at a time, then Scottrade would obviously be cheaper.

I believe option trading is also cheap at IB -- something like $5 per trade with $1 per option or something.

I haven't shopped around for Internet brokers in a long time, so I don't know how IB compares to the other brokers out there.

[wickedgoodtrader]

Ameritradeizone.com is $5 a trade. They only have e-mail tech support though. Ameritrade is $10.99 a trade and has worked out really well for me. They give you all kinds of cool stock tools and analyzersfor free if you are an active trader. I have an account at both.. so I get all the free goods from ameritrade but just place my trades over ameritradeizone.

[michiganfan9]

I like your interactivebrokers but the problem for me is that since i'm 15 i can't make that many trades a month. I make a trade every couple of months until i've saved up like $500-1000. But in others case that sounds really good. a penny a share is pretty appealing.

[tiltaholic]

http://www.smartmoney.com/brokers/index.cfm?story=2004-discount

i have no idea how good this review is...and i just signed up for scottrade cuz of the $7 trades.

[michiganfan9]

The $7 trades brought me in as well.