Be careful.
Be careful.
Ask your acquaintences for their last couple of years of 1099’s from E*Trade. If they balk, you’ll have your answer - they’re just blowing hot air. Lot’s of people claim to make lots of easy money trading stocks, few actually do since the bubble burst.
If you don’t know much about trading and don’t want to spend lots of time doing research, you’re better off buying mutual funds.
E*Trade is looking at filing bankruptcy protection. Not a good idea.
I know one person that tried it, luckly for him his wife is a doctor.
First, make sure you're logged in.
I have several accounts with Scottrade. I like ‘em a lot. Day trading = bad idea. But if you can make your own decisions, the low cost and good service are a big plus.
I’ve used Scottrade for years. No problems.
Are you talking day trading . . . holding stocks or options for a day or two or until strike . . . or just asking if online trading for buy and hold investing is a good idea? If the former, day trading and short term trading, it is very dangerous and really not a great idea unless you are one in a (100, 1,000, 1,000,000 . . .) in terms of your knowledge, talent, work ethic, experience and the like. If the latter, many brokerages allow you to buy and sell online without a telephone call.
If you're just looking to trade online, fidelity.com rules. I have my accounts there, and I've been very happy.
The only people I know who make money in this kind of daytrading pick a single stock or two and learn how to trade it based on some kind of pattern or predictability.
They make a zillion trades, making money on small price changes. They also have the ability to watch the trading like a hawk on Level 2 because they are retired or self-employed. Level 2 is the electronic system that shows you all the current bid and ask prices for a stock.
It is hard to make money these days doing this. The system, like all systems, benefits the most sophisticated and the most sophisticated is rarely the retail investor.
Scottrade pays 3.5% APR on your cash balance monthly. They also have branch offices in most cities. If you maintain a balance of $25k in your margin account, you get a premium trading platform that includes a virtual trading option that allows you to try out your strategies using virtual money. All buys are $7 and sells $7+ change on major U.S. markets including pinksheets. I’ve been with Scottrade for over 2yrs. and am doing fine trading atocks as a profitable hobby.
for later
I concur with several others...... Fidelity.
I also have an account with TD Ameritrade but somehow prefer the Fidelity trading engine.
I don’t trade much however.
I’ve seen you ask some very basic questions on FR before, I never chimed in.
Here I’m telling you that you do NOT have the ability to beat the market.
Do yourself a favor and accept reasonable returns with reasonable risk, you haven’t got a clue how much of a grind it is to daytrade as a profession, and it’s even harder to do it as a “2nd source of income” or even worse, as a “hobby”.
Go play small stakes online poker to get your kicks, don’t gamble daytrading if you are asking this question on this forum.
Some investors can achieve better returns than others if they invest in an asset allocation of indexes (Mutual Funds or ETF's) made up of Equity and Fixed Income indexes. Some mutual fund families are known for having a large selection of index funds. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.
Using indexes also simplifies the individual investment selection process since not all investments beat their respective comparable indexes on a regular basis. Using indexes also reduces the amount of research required and potentially reduces security selection risk.
Many asset allocation recommendations contain the following categories for Equity: Large Cap, Mid Cap, Small Cap, International Equity and REITs; and the following categories for Fixed Income: short, intermediate, international and long term.
Equity also has value, blend and growth styles. Fixed Income has low, medium and high quality styles. Frequently (but not always) a broad index includes a mix of styles. Often times an investor doesn’t want a blend of styles.
Investing in indexes can be done online with any of the better known online brokers with little transaction risk. All investments are subject to market risk and may or may not have a lower value when liquidated from when purchased.
How you construct your asset allocation is based on your age, risk tolerance and investment selections.
Generally speaking, the following risk tolerances have about the following generally accepted amount of Fixed Income holdings; these may vary further according to the judgment of the person developing the investment strategy:
Aggressive: 5-10%
Moderately Aggressive: 15-25%
Moderate: 40-50%
Moderately Conservative: 55-65%
Conservative: 75-80%
Please refer to one of the many risk tolerance surveys and pick one that you are comfortable with to determine your own personal risk tolerance.
After selecting your own risk tolerance, subtract the appropriate percent of Fixed Income (from the above table) from 100% to determine the Equity percentage for your portfolio. For example: if you have a Moderate Risk tolerance and if you selected 40% Fixed Income then you would have 60% available for the Equity portion of your holdings.
Continuing with this example, for simplification purposes and for a long term (10+ years) horizon, it would be OK, in my opinion, if you equally split the 40% Fixed Income among the 4 Fixed Income categories (10% each) and equally split the 60% Equity among the 5 Equity categories (12% each). This is slightly off from many of the established distribution and style recommendations, but in my opinion is not so far off as to cause any problems.
As long as your risk tolerance remains the same, you should then consider rebalancing your investments to the above distributions on a periodic basis. This could provide an asset allocated and diversified investment strategy with lower risk than what many other investors have.
As you can imagine, an asset allocation can get more complicated than this example.
Some professional money managers have better investment selection processes in place than others and have investment strategies with historically better risk and return results than the index strategy outlined above. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Money managers customarily charge fees for their services.
The above discussion, descriptions and examples are my own personal opinions only, are hypothetical, are for information and illustration purposes only and are not to be considered a solicitation. Anyone following this description does so at their own risk and agrees to hold harmless the author of this post.
I have bought and sold stocks over the Internet, using TD Ameritrade (formerly TD Waterhouse.)
However, I’ve NEVER been a “day trader,” instead buying and selling on very rare occasions.
Mark
“making substantial money”
Seems you’re attracted by greed which will cost you a bundle just like fear will. Fear and greed is what the market lives off of and it will take your money so fast you won’t know what happened.
Good traders, whether they are daytraders, swing traders (own a stock for 2 days to 2 weeks and then sell), or long term traders will make money. However, good traders are hard to find and much harder to emulate them. I would ask your acquaintances to explain how they do it. How do they pick the stocks, at what price do they buy and sell, etc. There is so much you need to know before you even attempt making “real” money in the market. If you’re not willing to spend 6 months to a year studying stocks and the markets and possibly spending from $500 to several thousand on a good trading course you’ll be nothing more than a gambler in a casino where the odds are 90% against you. Of course you don’t believe me.
Good traders get their gains from bad traders. Imagine a person who knows nothing about your job trying to do it. You’d beat them in a heartbeat because you know your job and what it takes to do a good job.
The internet has vast amounts of information on buying and selling stocks and a lot of it is good. I’m not talking about these places that tell you what stock to buy at a certain time and when to sell it. You need to know how you can do that yourself. Get educated and start with your acquaintances. My bet is they will be very helpful in helping showing you some ropes on how they do it.
You know friends that gamble? Do they only talk about it after gains, as compared to losses.
15 yrs professional advice. I’ll tell you this, and I work or have worked with thousands of people, and have colleagues who have worked with thousands of people. I can assure you this, your chances of trading your way to riches are actually less than you taking a buck, buying a lottery ticket and winning millions.
Some people can tinker with it, and appear to be making money, but eventually everything they make, is lost, then some, just like Vegas.