Need suggestions for good no/low fee online self investing brokerage firms! Help!
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Any of the usual suspects (Schwab, Fidelity, E*Trade, Firstrade, Robinhood, etc.) would probably serve your needs. Also, thereās not much reason to not have more than one account, because each broker has its own strengths and weaknesses.
If you truly donāt know where to begin and have small money, then take a look at Schwabās offer. https://www.schwab.com/investing-starter-kit For opening an account with $50 bucks, theyāll give you fractional shares of five stocks from the SP500 index, which you can promptly sell --or just take the cash equivalent-- thus doubling your money.
Where (or through whom) to execute is the least of your problems. What you need from the get-go is a BUSINESS PLAN that clearly identifies your goals, especially what you intend to do when things donāt work out as you hope.
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I use Fidelity. No fees. No complaints. Good service.
On another thread thereās a fraud alert on a Vanguard brokerage account.
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When you are starting new, you donāt need more than one account. Probably you need some solid brokerage houses like Fidelity, ETrade, etc. When your balances grow large and you have other needs you can consider additional brokerages. With Etrade you get Morgan Stanley research, and Bank of America you get Merill Lynch research. If that means anything to you, then you may factor that. Other than that Fidelity pays higher on the cash balance compared to the others.
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āWhen you are starting new, you donāt need more than one account.ā
I disagree. When a person is starting out, he/she doesnāt know how to evaluate brokerages firms and the services they might offer, which differ widely between them, as do their trading platforms, as will the look and feel of their website
Selecting broker is like selecting a fly rod. Do you mostly fish small creeks for native cutthroats? Then a midge rod might be the best tool, something thatās even less than 6ā6" and meant for a 2wt or 3wt line. Are you swinging streamers in bigger water? Then your rod will be 9ā to 11ā and meant for heavier lines.
These days, opening and closing brokerage accounts isnāt the hassle it used to be. Also, these days, some allow the setting up of a demo account so a person can do a test run.
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When you are starting new, focus on learning about investing and not get carried away with useless things like platformās ability to support API, etc.
I would challenge you to list basic things needed for a new/ medium investors, and then compare the features of the brokerage.
Unless you are someone trading on exotic instruments, tons of margin, heavy # of transactions, you will be wasting your time and spreading your dollar.
When you are starting, I would recommend you not even to buy individual stocks, rather start with Index.
Very poor advice for someone starting new.
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Thanks for the response. I have had a managed portfolio for over 25 years-without a great deal of success, Iād give it a āC+ā at best. Now I would like to branch out with investing some money I set aside just for this purpose. Iām relatively cautious, Iām not about to jump off the deep end before I can swim. So I do like to do my homework. I have spent countess hours studying my managed portfolio, joined a couple of sites like this & now I feel Iāve done sufficient homework to actually invest. I know Iām not ready to jump in to margins, commodities, day trading, etc. I want a spend the money Iāve allotted for this in a diversified portfolio-taking some risks.
I have also tried to do my done my homework on what firms would be best to invest my money. I understand some have personal &/or robo-advice-some none at all. I also fees vary from little to none. Each seem to have its own strengths & weaknesses. So my question is in attempt to get more advice from people who have used different firms. Iāve read & seen reviews that vary greatly on this subject so just trying to collect more information. Iāve seen reviews each suggesting something different-Robinhood, Scwab, Fidelity, SoFi & the list goes on.
Any info welcome. At some point I have to stop the data collection & make a decision- just having difficulty making that step!
Thanks
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K,
Your generic, non-user specific advice is bad.
Beginners arenāt monolithic. Each has his or her own needs, means, goals, opportunities, and personality. Hence, they need to discover who they are, how they manage hope and risk, etc. Hence theyāve gotta explore and be allowed the opportunity to make mistakes, not be directed directed toward a single path.
OTOH, the grim reality is this. Whether they call themselves āinvestorsā, ātradersā , āspeculators,ā whatever, most will fail to make more money in the financial casinos --on an after-taxes, inflation-adjusted basis-- than they bring to them for two reasons: They lack a sound business plan (and the discipline to follow it), and they are under-capitalized. In time, the latter problem can be fixed. The former, almost never.
Charlie
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All great points, but can you show me the different features of the brokerage platforms, that are the driving factor behind choosing them?
vicbag,
Do you want to be a Thousandaire, Millionaire, or Billionaire Swing Trading via Simon Sez iii and following a solid Business Plan. Use simplistic charts.
Pick one and go for it as your target.
re:Introduction to Swing Trading
re:Financial Terms Dictionary
When you open an account with you new broker, start off with a CASH only accouont and avoid Margins period and Options for they are a Zero Sum game.
If you are still employed create a Roth IRA cash account as soon as possible with as much money as you can or the max amount allowed every year.
Within the brokerage, setup a Dividend portfolio with about 25 stock with an option of DRIPing (dividend reinvesting program) them with a check off box. Or build a surplus of moneys into a pool to pay off the rent or car loan. Your letting the money work for you and not the inverse. Or setup an account with M1Finance.com.
Next, set aside a pool of dollars for Swing Trading or buy just a few INDEX funds and let it grow by itself.
For training buy a few ETFās (exchange traded funds) from https://www.sectorspdrs.com/
I own all of them plus XRT since 2006 as a Swing Trader per just two (2) simplistic rules that others have tried to break them and failed.
Learn how to read and use various kinds of charts that you are comfortable with.
Create some spreadsheets to help you with your progress for when you bought sold and profits earned.
I wish you the best,
Quill - a poor church mouse scratching for a living as a Swing Trader for over 48 years and an Investor for over 60 plus years.
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Check out the TMFās CAPs program. Once you pick seven stocks they will rate your performance vs the S&P 500 stock index every day. Once you can beat the index (have a positive score) you can consider switching to cash investments. Until then best to let the pros invest your funds for you while you learn.
At your leisure, review WEBULL for buying and selling stocks.
Next learn how to Swing Trade with Simon Sez iii rules for you will have about a 995 batting average. The instructions are here in the Investing Beginners board. For the very best charts, review Stockcharts and Barchart. They have tons and tons of great information and suggestions at you finger tips.
If a batter comes to the plate 62 times, and hits 62 doubles and singles, what is the batters batting average.
Quill -
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How kind of you to provide such informative information. Thank you. And a descendent of hockey players Iām not going to answer any baseball questions! 
āDonāt cry because itās over, smile because it happened.ā Dr. Seuss
āKnowing that when light is gone, love remains for shining.ā
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Quill,
Iām sure you misspoke. What is wanted isnāt charts that are āsimplisticā, but charts that are āsimpleā and easy to read.
Below might be an example where the second panel compares how the tradable ā in this case, a county fund that tracks the Philippines economy-- is currently doing compared to the US economy, for which an equal-weight SP500 index fund is a reasonable proxy. The stacked MAs suggest what the shorter term and intermediate trends are and which side of them one wants to be on.
As can be seen, the implied trading rules and their entry and exit points are no-brainer obvious.
Charlie
Quill,
āBatting averagesā canāt be spent at the grocery store or gas pump, as canāt oneās investment right/wrong score. What matters is whether the trade --the buy and the sell, no matter the length of the holding-period, which could be days or decades-- was done according to plan and whether, on average and over the long haul, the plan is producing the result it was intended to produce. What anyone else did or didnāt achieve is irrelevant.
Thereās a proverb long-distance hikers often quote thatās relevant here.
āHike your own hike.ā
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Vic,
Youāre mixing together and rejecting a lot of things that need to be separated out.
āMarginā simply means using borrowed money to make investments/trades. If the borrowing rate is A LOT LOWER than the nearly assured and expected payoff, then trading on margin can make sense. That, however, is nearly never the case. Hence, nearly all of them who post here, many running accounts of $1 million or more, never, ever use margin, though they have do have a margin account for the flexibility it offers them with placing trades with still unsettled funds.
As for avoiding commodities trading, you might as well bury your head in the sand. No matter almost what stock you buy, youāre trading oil. Donāt think you arenāt. So track it, as well as the $US.
As for ādayā trading", thereās times when exiting a position within a single day makes sense, and thereās times when holding for weeks/months/decades makes sense. The #1 reason to get out of a newly put on position fast is to correct an obvious mistake rather than than hanging on, hoping it will work out. The #2 reason is to lock in an obviously unsustainable windfall profit.
Next point. This investing/trading stuff is scary, and it should be scary, because the opposite side of every trade, every investment, you make is smarter, faster, meaner, better prepared, and better capitalized than you. That doesnāt mean you canāt beat them. But why try? Trade what theyāre trading, when they are trading. That means ignoring the ānewsā and talking heads and finding a niche in markets that makes sense to you and engages your interests and passion enough to do the work required to make financial bets in a responsible manner, which generally means betting small.
Hereās a simple example. A couple weeks ago, Aug 5, markets took a dive that everyone should have known was overdone. So I was in there buying. Not big, because I knew prices could go lower and eventually will go lower for a whole host a macro-economic reasons such US deficit spending, its half dozen losing wars, and the increasing de-dollarization on the part of the majority of the worldās economies. But Iām up 20% on COST and up nearly 40% on some gold miners.
Now consider this fact. The long-term gain offered by stocks is around 10%. (The recent yearsā higher average is due to unsustainable Fed policies.) But if 10% is what might be expected (and Buffet is known for projecting 8%), then gains in excess of that means that less capital has to be put at risk to achieve an overall portfolio goal of 10%. Alternatively, one could lock in those profit and furlough the money for a quarter or two or three.
In his intro book on value investing, The Intelligent Investor, Ben Graham implicitly sets up four categories (or tranches):
- Cash and equivalents
- Defensive investments
- Enterprising investments
- Speculative investments (or trades)
How one allocates funds between those tranches is one way of controlling oneās risks. A simple 4x, 3x, 2x, 1x scheme isnāt a bad way to go. Currently, Chicken Little that I am, Iām closer to 55% cash and equivalents, 40% defensive and enterprising, and 5% speculative.
Charlie
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I was a C minus student in high school and only got far as 9th grade math Failed algebra, trigonometry, but aced Descriptive geometry which came in handy when it came to designing state of the art computer chips, standard cell libraries, Input and output standard cell libraries and stand chip blocks for over 41 years until I got laid off in 2007. Managed and taught 12 men and women how to design complex chips for the first 10 years.
Was an Illustrative Draftsman P.O. 3rd class in the Navy with 2 tours in Vietnam. My jobs were classified with Secret clearances.
My 6th grade and 10th grade students tell me it is 1000 percent.
Most of my trades are 10 our of 11, 12 out 12, 11 out of 13 successful Swing Trades per Simon Sez iii two (2) simple rules as noted on this board. Most try to muck with it and die trying.
ie TECH is 42 out of 45 successful trades. Largest loss was $38,189.52 COST 13 out 15 successful trades Largest loss was $403.76
On average there are 8 to t1 successful trades for every stock / ETFs. If in doubt, count all the Highs in any of your stocks within your portfolioā¦
Quill,
Said another way, youāre a āpictures guyā instead of a ānumbers guyā, which explains why you were drawn toward charting and technical analysis rather than financial statement analysis. Other people are the opposite, and some fall into the middle, which is why learning to invest really is a journey of self-discovery.
Charlie
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āEeny, meeny, miny, moeā catch a chart by its toe, if it hollers, let them go for all the charts are the same in telling you when to buy āOut of the Gateā and when to sell at the āFinish Lineā.
It is the traders choice to make the decision of which one to choose from.
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Quill,
In order not to prejudice matters, letās assume the term ātraderā includes 'investors" and anyone who is making bets in financial markets. The decisions all of them face are several:
- Which market(s) to track?
- Which time frames to chart?
- What other factors to track and compare that might impact prices?
You --typically-- never track volume nor use composite technical indicators that incorporate it. But āvolumeā is an important part of the Wyckoff method, the IBD method, Weinsteinās stage analysis method, etc.
You --typically-- donāt plot comparatives on your charts, whereas I find them useful when evaluating country funds and stocks in general.
You dislike price bars using traditional candlesticks. I truly hate OHLC bars, even though --in each case- both are built from the same four facts.
I think your charts are cluttered and messy for your wanting to include as many indicators as possible. I like things stripped down to bare essentials. Etc. Etc. And every person will use the palette of lines and colors differently, just as artists working from the same model will create differing pictures. (Or the same artist will render the same scene a different way on another occasion. Think Monet and his waterlilies series.)
And there are some --typically fundamentalists-- who use no price-volume charts at all. So, āit all dependsā, and each of us finds ourselves using the analysis tools we find useful.
Charlie
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