Where To Invest

When you are beginning the search for your first (or next) online stock broker, you must first decide which category of brokers you are going to choose from. You need to determine which is going to be the best fit for your trading style and the costs you are willing to pay.

There are three categories of online stock brokers to pick from. They vary depending on their service levels, trading costs and the type of access to stock information.

1. Full Service Brokers - These are mostly the traditional big name firms who offer their own research, a very broad product portfolio and a staff of stock brokers to advise you on your trades.

While these brokers offer the most service, you pay more in commissions and fees. For most online traders, they want to do most of this work themselves. To pay the extra commission for the services of their broker staff then is not worthwhile

2. Direct Access Brokers - This category of brokers is very different than the traditional stock brokerages both in terms of what they offer and who their typical customer is. These brokers offer traders direct access to market data and for making their transactions. They often have their own software that you download onto your computer to make the direct connection and there are few extra services offered.

This category is important to day-traders and others who do serious trading and where minutes and seconds can make a big difference in their success.

3. Discount Brokers - Most online traders and especially beginners choose from the category of discount brokers. They are called discount brokers because when they first started, they focused on providing the tools for individuals to make their trades, but without the involvement of human stock brokers. This obviously saved a lot of cost and so the commissions they charged were a lot less.

Today, these are some of the most well-known and visible stock brokers including e*Trade, TD Ameritrade, TradeKing, Zecco and Scottrade. As their business has evolved, they now offer more advanced services like phone-in trades, branch offices, broker consultations and research.

Author: Daniel B. Johnson
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