Cheapest Online Stock Trading

in Trading Tools

The cheapest online stock trading is of course free stock trading with the best online stock brokers giving you free stock trades based on certain buying and selling criteria.

If you open an online stock brokerage account you might get 20 trades for free with broker A while online stock brokerage B will give you free trades if you trade “size” or maintain a certain minimum balance. Another might give you 20 trades a month but charge you pay a fee for subsequent trades.

If you can think of a commission structure there is more than likely several online brokerage firms at any given time advertising it. There are plenty of online discount brokers that charge a flat rate per trade or .01 or less a share per trade and some brokerages let you pick from a menu of fee structures to better suit your trading style.

If you trade 1,000 shares blocks it might make sense to go for the $7.95 per stock trade but if you are trading 100 or 200 share lots maybe the penny a share commission makes more economic sense to you and only you will be able to make that decision because only you know your trading habits.

So you see the cheap online stock trading will be different for every trader based on the way they trade stocks. Another thing to consider, even though this isn’t an issue as much now in the competitive world of online trading as it used to be, but in the past the stock brokers offering cheap commissions also had some of the worst customer service.

There is no worse feeling in the world than trying to liquidate a position and have your online stock trading platform go down as your trade position and thus your account continue to drop in value. In one trade you could easily lose more money than what you have saved in trading commissions by choosing the wrong online discount broker!

Thankfully the market votes with their dollars and any stock brokers offering cheap commissions that provide less than stellar customer service often find themselves with a shrinking customer base as word gets around very quickly in the online trading community.

So how do you get the cheap stock trades along with customer service? Simple, search out various online brokers by visiting their sites and make an Excel sheet of their fees. Next, review the stock trades you have made in the past to get an idea of how often you trade and the number of shares and dollar value per trade and pick the best brokerage account that fits your needs. Now do your due diligence and search for everything you can about the brokerage. Read comments made by people in trading forums, etc. and eliminate any companies with bad reviews.

The goal is to get a well-balanced overview of the brokerages before you commit your money and open an account. If the reviews are bad go back to your worksheet and look at the next stock broker and check them out. This should leave you with a list of the best online stock brokers and it should be easy to pick one.

Finally, open an account with the online broker you have chosen and download any stock trading platform and learn how to use it before actually buying and selling stocks with real money. Oftentimes best stock brokers will have a trade simulator that lets you practice simulated trading so you can get used to the different options of the online stock trading platform.

Put in a little effort upfront investigating your options and you will end up with a cheap online broker that will let you trade stocks online cheaply and efficiently.

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