Comments for Online trading and brokers.com

Comment on What is the best online discount broker for new investors? by Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:37:50 +0000

Hi Dauneek,

These are 5 I have personally used over the past year:

Scottrade – This one is well-recognized because of its personalized customer service, competitive fees and premium trading tools. This does have a $ 500 minimum deposit and no inactivity fee. It also has virtual and mobile trading options.

Zecco – Zecco offers free stock trades with the catch that the investor must make 25 trades per month to avail of the 10 free trades in the same period. The downside is that there are no international and mobile trading options. But, with its competitive pricing, Zecco is a great choice.

Thinkorswim – I like Thinkorswim because it offers zero minimum deposit with a standard $ 9.95 on trade commissions. Its broker-assisted trade fee is also at $ 9.95, which is considerably lower than the fees imposed by Etrade and TD Ameritrade.

Etrade – I opened up an ETrade account when they were offering a free blackberry and I had some money to park. They do have an account maintenance minimum of $ 1,000 otherwise they hit you with inactivity fees. Customer service has been good for me. ThinkSwim’s tools are way better though.

TradeKing – This is another online stockbroker with 0 minimum balance. The nice part is the access to the 150,000+ trader community.

I dont think you can go wrong with any of these. Hope this helps.

–Jonathan

Comment on What is the best online discount broker for new investors? by keithsan

keithsan — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:04:25 +0000

http://www.Scottrade.com http://www.etrade.com http://www.tdameritrade.com some come with more bells and whistles.

If your trading low priced stocks in the beginning check out http://www.thepennystockblog.com

Comment on What is the best online discount broker for new investors? by greatinvestideas

greatinvestideas — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 07:19:50 +0000

Zecco has very low commissions, around $ 4 per trade, going to 0 if you trade enough.

Comment on What is the best online discount broker for new investors? by Nick

Nick — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 07:11:19 +0000

Scottrade is the best for novice investors, plus it’s the cheapest broker.

Comment on What is the best online stock broker for a 18 year old with $500 to invest? by Anita

Anita — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 20:12:51 +0000

Scottrade has a $ 500 requirement to open accounts, so the figure you have mentioned is spot on target. They are easy to use, have good customer service and lots of no-load mutual funds.

If you want seven free trades, you can use my referral code. They are normally $ 7 but you’ll get seven free if you sign up before October 31.

The referal code is HSUP2244.

Comment on I need guidance on choosing a discount broker for purchasing stock. Who do you use and why? by Matteo M

Matteo M — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:34:48 +0000

I’ve been using E*trade for many years and I am very happy with it.. despite latest news….

Comment on what is the minimum amount you need to open and account and start doing online day trading.? by Sarah-Jane M

Sarah-Jane M — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:57:08 +0000

Well a lot of it depends on what you want to trade of course. Forex (currencies) for example, can be traded with just a few hundred dollars in an account.

Futures need a few thousand in your account. And stocks, as someone already pointed out, usually requires at least $ 25,000 in your account (in the USA). BUT, there are ways around that if you know where to look. You should check out Harvey Walshs site (in the sources to this reply) and sign up for his free report, not for the report itself (although it’s very good), but more for some of the emails he sends out as a follow up – there’s some good information in there for free, including how to trade stocks with much less money.

Comment on what is the minimum amount you need to open and account and start doing online day trading.? by fritz a

fritz a — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:17:47 +0000

Are you sure you have been reading?which securities are you interested in?let’s say stocks! the amount ranges from 1$ with a discount broker like zecco.com(no minimum account deposit) to $ 200,000 using an ECN or more advanced brokers.It will be preferable to start with brokers like E*trade,TD Ameritrade,scottrade,shareBuilder and Zecco.Zecco will be the best option for a beginner to start with because it offers no minimum deposit,free trade,good live support and analysis.E*trade and Ameritade are also so good but i won’t recommend it for a beginner because of the fees and other restrictions.If you have got so much money i recommend you use an ECN;the level 2 direct access trading,i think the minimum deposit is about $ 200 000,with this you need no broker(i mean no commissions to pay) and you deal directly with the market;it is meant for senior individual traders,fund managers and banks.

But if you are serious to get going,you’ve read pretty well and practiced too and maybe you are not so rich..you should start with that $ 1000 you are willing to loose and you will make it big.But any amount less can do.Good luck dude

Comment on Index – stock correlation and trading……….? by jeff410

jeff410 — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:46:46 +0000

To measure the correlation between a stock and an index use R-Squared.

Comment on Index – stock correlation and trading……….? by Barry789

Barry789 — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:49:13 +0000

Some stocks are inversely correlated with some indices, which means that they may go up when the index goes down. These are hard to find, and usually turn out to offer the illusion of protection against a general market decline.

If the stock is already in a retreat from its trend, which is what I infer from “trading near support,” then the stock may have already started down in advance of the market’s decline. Who’s to say it won’t now participate in any general decline? Would you bet your client’s money on this?

The only truly defensive stock is no stock — in other words, cash.

I wouldn’t buy.

As for correlation, that’s an interesting thought, but the problem with that is that stocks tend to be correlated with an index in the long term, but we have to exist in the short and intermediate term. They are correlated until they aren’t is one way to put this.

Most technical analysis is built on a very fragile Gaussian analytical system, one highly dependent on the normal distribution. Since stock returns (and by extension prices) are not normally distributed, any analysis and decisions based on these statistical tools will ultimately fail, usually just when it is most damaging.

You can compute correlation coefficients all day long and get kicked in the teeth when some non-Gaussian (for want of a better term) event occurs and drives the price of a stock or the market as a whole down something like 10 “standard deviations.”

Since the ruling distribution appears to be some sort of Pareto distribution, and since the first moment, the standard deviation is undefined in these distributions, all of the fancy tools based on normal statistical techniques and the resulting standard deviation are irrelevant, misleading and dangerous.

The failings of modern portfolio theory over the past 40 years have been so great that we should just write these things off as a bad experiment and develop other tools that will both have greater predictive power and take cognizance of the messy reality behind the distribution of returns (stock prices.)