Choices for low cost brokers for newbies?

Quote from slowtrend:

Yes, I'm over 18.

It might be a way to get started. You pay a flat monthly fee and can trade freely, up to so many trades in the same account. Or you pay $4 a trade without the monthly fee.

The description of the window trading is:

WINDOW TRADES

Low Cost Advantage
Our revolutionary trading system cuts costs dramatically, and we pass the savings on to you. Enough that you can enjoy up to 600 commission-free trades a month! Rather than immediately send every order to the market, we group them together. Here's how it works: you place your order at any time throughout the day. During the day, when the market is open, we group our customer orders together into windows and make trades. Click here for our current window trade times and frequency. We match customer buy and sell orders, and then, send any unmatched orders to the market. We also provide matching of customer orders from our fractional account.

Best Trade Execution
The cost advantages of window trades extend beyond the break on commission fees. Window trades allow us to give you, where possible, better pricing. When we match customer orders, we match them between the bid and the ask price. This gives you a better price than you could get if you went direct to the market. For example, if a stock has a bid price of $50.00 and an ask of $50.25, we would give both the buyer and the seller the mid-point, $50.125. Thus, saving you $.125. If you were buying 100 shares, you'd save $12.50!

Multiple Trades at Once!
At most brokerages, you have to place a separate order for each stock you want to buy or sell. At FOLIOfn, you can save yourself some time, by buying or selling up to 50 securities at once! You can choose individual securities you want to buy and sell, buy or sell a whole Folio, exchange one Folio for another, rebalance your Folio to meet target weights. And, it is so easy, just select what you want to do, and we'll take it from there. In just a click, you have managed your portfolio. Window trading not only saves you money, it saves you time!

Invest in Dollar Amounts
With window trades, you can place orders in dollar amounts, because we allow you to own fractional shares of securities. This means you don't have to save up money to buy a whole share or shares of a security. Instead, you can invest whatever dollar amount you want, split it amongst a number of shares or buy portions of one security.

Time of Window Trades
Currently, there are two window trades each business day that the market is open.

11:00 AM
Orders placed between 2:00 PM and 11:00 AM Eastern Time the following business day are matched and processed starting at 11:00 AM.

2:00 PM
Orders placed between 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM Eastern Time are matched and processed starting at 2:00 PM.
**

They charge you $14.95 for a direct trade, so I guess if you just have to get out of a position, you can.

Real-time Trades - $14.95 per security
We offer Real-time trades, which allow you to send orders directly to the market and choose among nearly 10,000 securities. You can trade up to five different securities in one direct order. We charge $14.95 for each security in your direct trade order (market orders only).

Thanks.
More...

Is that from the folio site? I couldn't find it. Sounds like a great deal for a lot of people.
 
yes, that is from the folio site.

Lots of info on their site. I searched here on ET and found one comment/caution about execution.

It does offer quite a bit.
 
Well,

Foliofn is one choice......then there is http://www.buyandhold.com

You will find BuyandHold.com beats FolioFN with 4 points...
  • Truly unlimited.....(not 200 trades) with symbols and number of executions per month....(as long as each entry is a minimum of $20.00)
  • Less expensive....$14.99/mo.
  • Transfer of cash uses EFT (electronic funds transfer) as positions are put on and pulls money form your existing checking account of choice(if you have an interest bearing acct even better) as needed....also withdrawals handled the same way but in reverse after settlement.....So let me explain, you click the buy button and it asks if you want it to pull from your bank account or your trading account....If you choose bank account then at the end of the day the money is transferred from you local bank account to cover your buy order, even if its only $20.00...So you can essentially open up an account with them and when you make your first purchase is when it gets funded easily and electronically...
  • 3 windows instead of 2 windows 10:00/12:30/15:00 est

Michael B.

P.S. This is not for daytrading or precision.....This is more for a person willing to accept long positions only and generally holds overnight...even though you could try and daytrade and get executed...I do not know why the PDT rule does not apply at these Folio companies...but being that it is a window trade and the trader cannot choose price I think exempts them.

P.S.S. At BuyandHold.com they claim they simply save the trades up from each window and execute one market order for each symbol....FolioFN claims they try to match trades before submitting their market orders....I do not know the truth...but they probably derive some income due to this blank check they are getting from traders.
 
Quote from slowtrend:
My online trading/investing experience has been since the end of last year. As I was filling out the new account app at Interactive Brokers, it asks for trading experience, trades per year. Apparently I don't make the grade at this point. I might call them just to see what is up. I'm willing to risk my money to learn, so why wouldn't they work with me to get to that point?
[/B]
More...

When I started out I had the same experience with IB. Don't waste your time calling them. They wouldn't even say what the minimum requirements were, it's "Top Secret" information that only their compliance department knows. They just kept saying "reapply". :P

I went with OX (OptionsXpress) instead. They will take beginners but put you at a level where you can't do complex strategies like "Iron Condors" and shoot yourself in the foot. They have paper trading too for you to learn with.

It's just like the job market, everyone wants experience but no want wants to give you the opportunity to gain it. ;)
 
......Just use a good broker. IB, MB, or Tradestation are all cheap for stocks. I've got accounts at all, and it's hard to go wrong with any one of them -for you.
Do you want to stick your money at a place that will be out of business in 6months.......just to save 50 cents on a trade??!!! IF NOT>>then pick one of the above.
 
Quote from Maharaja:

Why don't u apply to IB and use the L-I-E method. :-)
More...

that's a horrible recommendation for someone filling out legal documents. I should add your post points to why we do not release facts/figures on what the basic requirements are.

The product IB offers is for experienced traders and for a number of internal and regulatory reasons, we require a certain amount of trading experience before opening an account with us. I sympathize that you can't open an account at this stage but the policy on the whole benefits our firm and client base.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top