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I have been learning a great deal from this forum lately and am eager to begin trading. I do have a few questions though, as a college student with very limited credit history, can I still open a cash account? Also, any suggestions as to which brokerage is best for this forums' general trading habits? Any help would be greatly appreciated and I look forward to trading.
Posts: 3 | Registered: Apr 2004
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before u do any trading... read everything you can find on how to trade..then read some more lol ... for no minimum brokerages look into lowtrades.com , choicetrades.com & tradedirect.com... books and authors i suggest are below... do you want to daytrade or swing/position trade? ...
www.toniturner.com = both her books are excellent depending on what type of trading you would like to do... www.marketwise.com = david nassar site.. great daytrading author..
posted
I'm more interested in swing trading, because of the 25000 initial deposit. i've read that some of these low-comission brokers don't allow bids under a full cent. any experience with that? also, do you know if a credit check is required? due to a lack of credit history on my part, that would be a major setback. thanks for replying!
Posts: 3 | Registered: Apr 2004
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i bet u bad credit doesn't matter with margin accounts. with cash accounts, it is no problem.
regarding brokers, i suggest u call the brokers themselves to see what they do and do not do. i know www.tradingdirect.com will let u buy subpennies, but, they only let u buy 1 million shares per trade so unless ur buying with small change alot of the time u can't play the subs.
i am from Canada and thus cannot open accounts in the US, although somehow i opened an account with tradigdirect back in the day. i think something changed along the way. anyhow, here are some brokers i would recommend. www.freetrade.com if u have 5000 www.ameritrade.com if u have 1000 or 2000 (not sure) and level II from your broker is important to u www.empirenow.com they might have free level II, and will have a low minimum, like 500 or 1000, and cheaper trades than Ameritrade www.choicetrade.com 5 dollar trades, no level II
with all of these brokers other than freetrade and ameritrade, ask them how many decimals u can buy too, whether u can buy Pinksheet stocks, and whether the flat fee is for a truly unlimited amount of shares, or only 1 million or something along thos lines.
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well if you want to do swingtrading then the book i recommend is Toni's A Beginner's Guide to Short-Term Trading.. if you lack alot of funds and want to open a account with $1,000 or less... the brokerages below should be good to start with but weigh the pro's and con's of each one against the others... you can start with a no minimum brokerage and swingtrade.. and as you build up your account to the $25K mark you can switch up to other brokerages who might not have limitations on pinks and such... www.lowtrades.comwww.choicetrade.comwww.tradingdirect.comPosts: 3884 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Pennys is not the place to start with $25000 of credit and no experience. VAN
Posts: 1424 | From: Peoria, IL. USA | Registered: Oct 2003
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thanks for your help guys, i'm weighing the pros and cons between your suggested brokers. because i am dealing with about $1000 initial investment, tradingdirect.com is looking like the best bet. i am wondering if there is a fee after the 1 million share line, such as a 1% of principle fee common with others. guess i'll have to wait 'til monday to call and find out. thanks again.
Posts: 3 | Registered: Apr 2004
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although tradingdirect is okay, i really would recommend u call www.choicetrade.com or www.empirenow.com empirenow's minimum is 1000, and both brokerages have lower commission prices than tradingdirect.
if u call empire, ask if u can trade pinksheet stocks.
regarding choicetrade, they got 3½ stars from Barron's. i don't know if it's out of 4 or 5 stars, but either way, for 5 bucks a trade, it sounds like a pretty good deal.
[This message has been edited by Junky (edited May 01, 2004).]
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At Trading Direct they just wont put order through if bigger than 1 million. My suggestion buy 1 million then put order in for 2nd million. Even at .001 a million shares is $1000 so if starting with that it will be a while before you should have to worry about putting in those 100 million share orders.
Machiavelli mentioned he is mainly doing paper trades (no real money involved) right now as he learns after losing most of his money the first time he started trading. Especially for swing/day traders I think that is a good idea, as otherwise it is very easy to lose your money to swing on, before you learn how to earn.
Posts: 222 | From: Victorville,CA USA | Registered: Mar 2004
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Yeah.. i did what others on the board are tending to do .. buy on "tips" and nothing else.. never did any research or anything.. i bought at the time stocks in hotjobs.com and egghead.com ... both doubled my money because of the tech stock buying frenzy at the time but when the bubble burst i lost everything.. hotjobs.com is still around but egghead.com went bankrupt and as far as i know no longer exists.. like big t mentioned learn all you can first and "papertrade" first to test if you grasp what you learned... costs nothing and can save you thousands of bucks in the long run...
Posts: 3884 | Registered: Mar 2004
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