Why Use a Online Stock Trading For Small Investors Site?
The top performers in my review are OptionsHouse, Fidelity and TD Ameritrade. Here’s more on choosing a system to
meet your needs, along with details on how we arrived at our ranking of these
10 services.
Investing in the stock market can be a daunting prospect.
All the jargon, tickers and charts can make investing seem like something you
need an advanced degree and years of training for. Most brokerages make stock trading for beginners easy, providing investment education and tutorials to
help you learn about the markets and the best use of platforms for your
particular investment strategy.
The best online stock trading site for small investor
include courses, quizzes, webinars and other resources to teach you about the
stock market and investing. These brokerages also offer step-by-step training
on how to best use their platform.
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| Best Online Stock Trading Site For Small Investors |
What We Evaluated & What We Found To Find The Best Online Stock Trading Site For Small Investors
User Training & Investor Education
When evaluating online stock brokers, we payed particular
attention to the resources they provide about the stock market for beginners.
The best of these include investment education and user training, so beginners
can learn about the markets and securities as well as how to place trades.
The best of these brokers offered investor education that
included courses that covered a wide variety of topics. As a beginner, you may
not be well versed in the jargon of the investment world, and these courses can
help give you a solid footing before you begin investing. E*TRADE's courses
were the most in-depth of any broker we reviewed, and its courses included
quizzes that tested you on your knowledge.
Most brokers also offered some combination of articles,
webinars and blogs. In particular, the webinars can be helpful since they
provide regular updates and can address market events as they happen. The best
brokers also offer an archive of their webinars so you can access them at any
time.
Also important is the quality of the user training the
broker offers. Tutorials and videos can show you how to use the platform and
its various features. The best give you step by step coaching that takes you
through easy processes like setting a trade, sep ut a watch list or analyzing
share. An easily accessible knowledgebase, which include training manuals and
FAQs, is another useful tool. The best include visual examples to help you
quickly find what you're looking for. OptionsHouse, TradeStation and TD
Ameritrade are the brokers with the best user training in our review.
Platform Usability
Our reviewers tested each of these online stock broker's
trading platforms with a particular eye on how user friendly they are for
beginners. We looked at the ease of setting up watch lists and alerts, the
variety of charting tools, and the ease of analyzing the performance of a
particular stock. The best allow you to easily search for stocks and securities
by symbol or by name, and they make it easy to add those to a watchlist. The
best charting tools allow you to compare stocks with each other and with
different industries and to use different indicators to analyze that stock's
performance.
The best platforms also make it easy to order trades and set
up options chains. You should also be able to fund your account by connecting
it with your bank using your bank's routing number. Another mark of a quality
platform is easy access to tax documents and the ability to import that
information directly into a program, such as TurboTax.
Mobile Apps & Other Trading Tool
Each broker in our review offers a mobile app in addition to
its desktop or online trading platform. Mobile apps are a useful tool to have
for first-time investors. By using a broker's mobile app, you can monitor your
positions, receive alerts, make trades and move funds between your accounts.
The best mobile apps sync to the online account so you can access your
watchlists anywhere. Some apps, such as TradeKing's, don't allow you to create
alerts through the app and require you to manage them through the desktop app.
Scottrade, OptionsHouse and Fidelity all offer standout mobile apps.
Other trading tools we evaluated include the number of
options strategies and analytic charts the broker offers. The best brokers
include options strategies beyond buying basic calls and puts. These advanced
strategies include Iron Butterflies, Iron Condors and Strangles. These
strategies can be an effective way to set yourself up to succeed and get the
outcomes you're working toward. If you have little interest in options trading,
this may not be an important consideration.
TD Ameritrade was a standout in this area, offering over 300
different analytic charts and forecasting with its prophet tool.
Fees & Commissions
As a beginner you won't be trading a high volume of stocks,
so the difference in pricing may not be a big factor in your decision. The
brokers we reviewed charge between $5 and $10 per trade. Beginning stock traders
may want to pay attention to the broker-assisted fee. Most services charge if
you need a broker's help completing a trade. The highest broker-assisted fee we
found was TradeStation with a fee of $50. A broker-assisted fee of $25 is
around average, and optionsXpress waives this fee entirely.
My Verdict And Recommendations To Choose Best Online Stock Trading Site For Small Investors
OptionsHouse is the top-ranked broker in our review. Its
online platform ranked the best in our usability tests, and it offers a mobile
app that is easy to use and has much of the same functionality as the web
platform. With video tutorials providing step-by-step training, OptionsHouse
has some of the best user training our reviewers encountered. At $4.95 a trade,
OptionsHouse also has affordable fees.
TD Ameritrade has some of the most robust trading tools we
reviewed, and you can open a PaperMoney account to practice trades in a
simulated environment before you begin making trades with your actual money.
Fidelity offers excellent education about investing and the
stock market and includes some of the best tools in our review. It also has a
very good mobile app but needs an upfront inversion of $2,500, turning it a
more costly option than other brokerage I reviewed.
optionsXpress is another broker whose platform stood out. It
offers tools to allow you to compare stocks with different industries as well
as automate your trading. This broker doesn't have as many training tools or
features as other brokers we reviewed did.
Etrade Financial has some of the most thorough investor
education in our review. It offers courses covering basic investing all the way
through advanced options strategies, and it includes quizzes to test your
knowledge. It has a strong platform with many useful tools, but it is harder to
use.
Stock trading online for beginners can seem daunting, and while
every broker in our review offers a quality suite of tools to make trades and
analyze stocks, the best offer education on investing and training on how to
best use the trading platform.
