Online stock trading?

[norm25]

Is this the correct place for this?

Have any of you done it?

What's the cost?

Time frame to trade?(does it take 10 day's or hours)

Thinking of expanding my portfolio and looking for opinions on the different online companies.

Not sure if they can be named here.

Looking to start, any advice would be appreciated.

Norm

[irvingdog]

Leave it alone. I've been in or around the industry for 20 years, but never a broker. They get paid for a reason. The online trading fad is fading these days. I guess the D.I.Y. folks are almost out of money now.....

Trust your broker, and don't be eyeballin' your portfolio all the times. In good times or in bad....

[FZ]

Online trading is easy, once you set up an account, you may enter a trading order and it takes less than 10 sec to complete the market order trade. It costs from zero to $20 per trade.

You may do online trading with online brokers (Interactive Broker, TDAmeritrade, Scottrade, Etrade ...), Banks (WellsFargo, Bank of America, CitiBank ...) or mutual fund companys (Fidelity, Charles Schwab ...).

[pinkfloyd4ever]

I've been looking to do that too, like my uncle says, its the same as gambling, instead of dropping $200 at the casino, take it and buy penny stocks, never know when you hit the next google or yahoo or whatever, plus he said if you do get a good loss, you can claim it on taxes! Yet, I still haven't taken the time to do it either

[slipperybob]

If you buy stocks responsibly, it's never a gamble or a fad. You will own a piece of the company. Market orders can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours to complete, depends on the stock availability. The advantage to online trading is cost savings.

[norm25]

So who do you choose? Lot's of choices. Which services do you use and do you like them?

[delcecchi]

I have done it through TDameritrade. Costs 9.95 or maybe 10.95 per trade. A trade takes less than a minute to place order and get executed unless you ask for something special, like a limit order.

There is no fee except if you execute a transaction.

You can do options and margin and all that stuff if you want to. I stay far away from all that.

You can buy stocks and ETF mutual fund shares. I think they pay you to open an account but I don't recall any details.

[CatfishBanker]

You can get 100 free trades per year per account type with Wells Fargo as long as you keep a 25k+ relationship value.

[FZ]

I am using TDAmeritrade for its technical analysis tools. I am using WellsTrade (WellsFargo) to trade stocks (cost nothing for first 100 trades, and 5.95 thereafter). I am using IB (Interactive Brokers) for option trading (cost a few cents per contract).