Many people are interested in trading, but have no idea how to get started. You might have come across someone who has been trading, and want to do what they are doing but just don't know where to start..... Well below we will get you on the right track of what you can to do.
Opening Up A Trading Account
Once you decide whether or not you want to trade, the first thing that people usually do is open up a trading account. This is simply a place where the person can go to buy and sell stocks. There are many different companies out there that let you open up accounts. Some examples are TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, Suretrader, Scottrade and TradeKing. These are all companies that allow you to open up a trading account.
Let's Take TD Ameritrade For Example
All of the companies above can best be described as Brokers. These are places you can go to open up a trading account. Once you go to a site such as TD Ameritrade, there will be an option to open up an account. Now when you do begin opening up an account, there are many different account types. TD Ameritrade will usually give you options such as individual, join tenants, traditional ira, roth ira, rollover ira and trust. If you are just looking for a way to buy and sell stocks each day, the individual account would be the best option. Below is a picture of what we are talking about to clear up any questions!
Adding money to your account After you choose the account type, it will walk you through the rest of the application. It will get more personal and ask you questions such as your name and address. Once you complete the rest of the application, it will let you log in with the username and password you set for your account. The next part is adding money. There are usually ways to link your bank account to the trading platform. They walk you through this process so it should be very easy. Once you add money, now your account is ready for trading! Now Trading can be very difficult at first and many people go in with no experience whatsoever. They see someone on Twitter making a bunch of money and they think it's that easy. The problem with this is it's far from the truth. Once you start studying stocks there are many strategies a person can take to make sure they are truly ready to trade with real money. This is why we love demo accounts. Demo accounts give you the ability to trade with fake money and practice with different strategies. Websites such as www.marketwatch.com allow you to open up a demo account which is great. Here is a picture below of the virtual stock exchange page which can be viewed from the link above.
Deciding which broker you want Like we mentioned above, there are many different brokers to choose from. Most of them are similar for the most part. We would say one of the most important factors is the commission prices. Now all of these brokers need to make money some how right? What they do is charge you to buy and sell your stocks. TD Ameritrade for example will charge you 10 bucks to buy the stock you want and then 10 bucks to sell that stock. Obviously this can eat into your profits, so it's important to do some research beforehand. As of recent Robinhood has become very popular. If you do some research on the company, you will see they are offering no commissions which is nice. Even though we don't recommend them as a broker, they might be a great place to start
Comments