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You can download Interactive Brokers trading software for free/no obligation and do paper trading to get used to the interface. I personally find the interface to be ugly and confusing. I have no idea why they don't do a better job with their interface. IMHO, it looks like they haven't spent...

I see them happen a lot. But I look at daily and weekly charts. If you are looking at minute-by-minute charts, I don't know.

Hello, Has anybody used Ally Invest? Their fees are lower than many others ($3.95 per trade with enough activity or enough balance), plus it is a reputable company and the interface looks nice (I really like nice interfaces... they add a lot of value to my experience). I don't know what their...

TD is solid. Their trade fees are higher than most. But they are solid.

This is meaningful information.

Their interface is horrible too. I simply cannot stand TWS or their web interface.

I was thinking the following: if you had an idea to buy an option, and you see a *lot* of people taking an open interest on that exact same date/price, then maybe the smart people are thinking what you are thinking, but they have even better info and skill. So you kind of copy the good ideas of...

Hello, Once in a while I will see a very high number of open interests, like this: 14 64 3240 134 4 In the above example, 3240 jumps out on a particular strike price/date that is way above the normal amount of open interests for that stock. This gets me to wondering if the smart money knows...

This is an interesting detail. Robinhood has described the way they make money is this: they round up the uninvested cash you have in your account and collect interest on it. I haven't heard of them giving your orders a less-competitive price in the bidding process. I am new at this. Are we...

It is great that Robinhood exists. They have a new web-based interface they are rolling out early 2018. It looks very nice (unlike Interactive Brokers' clunky hideous interfaces). Plus free trades mean you can take smaller positions and not get hammered on fees. My concern is that whether or...

Hello, I saw a stock today. It was down a bit, and hasn't moved. An hour later, the long option price a few months out on a particular strike price goes up. Nothing changed in the stock price. If anything, the price should go slightly down, because the time value is eroding. If many people...

I think Republicans are planning to drive this through within 10 days... before the new Senator enters office in January.

Thanks for your response. I used to think options were exotic things for risk-takers and very sophisticated people. While I still think that has truth to it, I'm also thinking that options can be thought of as a tool for a task. If it is the right tool for the task, then use it.

Hello, Lately I've been buying stocks with the intent to sell them a few days or a few weeks later. I sometimes feel like I have a good sense when a stock might go up (I will need enough real or paper trades over time to see if this is just luck). When that happens, I go buy 100-200 shares...

Also, I believe the S&P 500 performance over the years includes investing the dividends back into the fund/index. The average dividend in the S&P is 2%, so if the S&P is claiming 9% per year over 10 years, it's really 7% stock appreciation + 2% dividend being re-invested. I'm not sure about...

Hello, I've read in several sources that the value of the stocks in an ETF can drift away from the price. So an ETF trading at $190 could have only $180 of stocks pegged to the $190 price. I even read somewhere (the internet... who knows how reliable), that one ETF was trading at a price 2x...

That's a good point. When you buy the S&P 500, you are saying U.S. large cap stocks is the way to go. I also believe the S&P is weighted, so that is also an expression of opinion. Indexes provide cost-efficient diversification, but they still express a point of view (my index is better than...

Thanks, It's interesting that the fees were only a little lower. It appears that IB would be way cheaper, but I'm new at this!

What is a "data feed", and what is a "decent data feed"? I'm new to this. I'm not sure what you mean. I hope they don't charge you to get the realtime stock quotes. That would be silly. You need that information to trade. How can you place a trade if you don't know what the current price is?

Could you clarify what these data feeds are? Do you mean they charge you to get the realtime stock prices during the day while you are trading? Or do you mean things like live newsfeeds?