Small amounts of stock?

Question

I want to buy small amounts of stock for fun. Who has a good service to go through?

Mostly looking for low monthly/hidden fees, reasonable trade cost. Personal experience w/ a service/website would be nice, but anything you have heard good about..

Answer 1

I personally use thinkorswim for short term trades, and Fidelity for longer term investments (enough assets to qualify for Silver level trade fees).

One that is popular with smaller traders is Scottrade.  I think you can open an account with as little as $500.  I have no experience with them, but my brother retired over 20 years ago (at age 32) and still uses them as one of his brokers.

Answer 2

The on-line broker you choose will depend on your experiance level and needs. The least expensive brookers are the ones for the more experianced traders.

For example;

Interactive brokers......... it costs me $1.00 to buy 200 shares.

$5.00 to buy 1000 shares.

ThinkOrSwim: it costs me $5.00 to buy 200 shares.

it costs me $9.95 to buy 1000 shares.

I use both. I love the ThinkOrSwim platform, esp the charts.

Both have many "order types", Interactive Brokers platform is hard to learn.

I use IB for mostly large share day trading. TOS is for everything else (80% of my trades).

These brokers will be great for you in a few years...... after you've got the basics down..... to start... I'd suggest;

Charles Schwab Or Fidelity Investments, they're more costly... but significantly more geared to the new trader.

Answer 3

Try Scottrade... not sure of their commission, but I hear great things about them. You might want to turn your " fun" into a real profitable hobby...might as well be with a good broker to start.

My day-trading friends say that Scott provides many more research tools for short- term work...and even to small accounts.

I'm more long -term, but I am thinking about opening something with Scott ...just to get a look.