New to it. Looking for advise with Brokerages...

Z

zfmt

I'm new to this. I'm soft of self taught. I read a lot of investment books and do some paper trading. My parents are, for my birthday, going to fund an account for me to trade with and I'm really excited to start working with some actual money. But, there are a few things I'm unsure of.

It wont be much money, just a couple thousand. And I'll probably be focusing on penny stocks. I went in to set up an account with TD Waterhouse (I'm Canadian), and because my account is small, they want to charge me 30$ each trade + some other fees. That's too much. I probably trade about 10 times a month. I'm not super active, but I've managed some decent returns in the simulations. My question...

Are there any brokerages that would be affordable for a beginner who doesn't have a lot of money?

I'd appreciate any advise on this. Or really, any advise you could give to a newbie would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Zak
 
speedtrader has pretty good rates, you should check them out. if you want to save some money on data, they have speedtrader 2.0 which only gives level 1 data but i think it's free to use
 
Quote from zfmt:

I'm really excited to start working with some actual money.
More...

Congratulations, this is a wonderful opportunity for you.

The best lesson I learned when I started off was that I did not have to take THAT trade. The market would still be there the next day, and there would be many more opportunities. Be very selective.

That and work on identifying a time frame / style that you are comfortable trading. In my case it turned out to be swing trading stocks.
 
If you're in canada check out questrade. 4.95 to buy/sell stocks. I used them before I moved to the states.
 
Thanks guys!

I checked out speed trader and it's really complicated. I it looks like it would have a huge learning curve. But it's definitely something I'll get back to. Its soooo cheap!!!

Thanks for the advise. I remember hearing a while ago, the only time you lose money is when you sell. They say over trading is super common - actually come to think of it - an old friend had an account with 20,000$ and in a single day he lost 5,000$ because he made a ton of bad trades because he got scared.

I think questrade might be right for me for now. It's cheap and the head quarters is just down the street from me, so i could give 'em hell if there are technical issues. lol

thanks guys,
have a good one.
 
I trade out of fidelity.com, mainly because I already had mutual funds set up there so it was easy to transfer some cash into my stock trading account. Commission is $7.95 which is higher than I'd prefer, but the biggest advantage is the research they provide. Just type in a symbol and you can find out anything you want. What the company does, its balance sheets, fundamental/technical analysis, analyst opinions, reports, news, mergers, stock screens etc...I'm still fairly new to the game so it's been an incredibly useful resource, as I can scan in TC2000 and look for a tasty looking candlestick chart, then research everything about that company in 1 spot to ensure I'm not dumping money into something that's about to tank.

If you don't need that research/have other resources, I'd go elsewhere with cheaper commissions. Oh, and you also don't get their Active Trader Pro software off the bat, you have to have 120 trades in a rolling 12 month period before you're eligible; I just use TC2000 gold as it suits all of my charting needs.

Oh, and on the note of over-trading. One of the big things I had to overcome at first was that feeling of "I gotta be in the game." If I had just sold off a stock, I felt like I immediately had to find something to reinvest it in or I was losing out on money. When you rush into those buys you're setting up for a loss sometimes, so be sure to develop a set of rules and don't get too antsy just because you've got cash on hand.
 
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