
How do I find a cheap, easy to use broker? There are SO MANY - how do I chose? The ones I've heard about include Ameritrade, eTrade, Sharebuilder, TDWaterhouse, ScotTrade, Fidelity, the list goes on! What makes them all different?
What I know: I'd like do invest relatively conservatively (IE - no day-trading). I'd like to invest in ethanol. I'd like to invest for down the line…
The only resource I'm using now are
http://www.investingonline.org/index.html
Yahoo! Finance.
HELP!
Update:
I'm probably looking to invest a few thousand for now. That may increase but I dont foresee investing more than 5-10K.
As far as where I was planning to put my money - mostly in stocks in NYSE or Nasdaq. Prob not smallcaps/penny stocks, but I did have my eye on an IPO or two. BTW what are franchise stocks?
I was actually thinking about Sharebuilder - it comes highly acclaimed. Why is touted so much? Advantages / Disadvantages?

Investing in a mutual fund IRA for retirement may give you an income tax break. Talk to your tax adviser. You may also be able to invest in a stock mutual fund via a 401K plan at work.
Believing advice you get on Yahoo answers can be risky, so read these websites for further information. If you find it too confusing, contact a professional financial advisor. They will charge you significant commissions, however.

It was 10/18 - before 1:00am - when I placed an online order to buy ONT with limit $1.20 each. I got it for $1.16 - the highest ONT trading rate for the day - even at 10:30 am east - when I called my broker to ask why I got the shares at the highest rate:
1) Broker said AMEX trading hours for ONT have not really started at 9:30am.
2) The charts on broker site show the AMEX opening hours: 9:30 am/ Opening price for about 4 minutes: $1.07/share and it did not jump right away to $1.16.
3) I did not order to buy the shares before the AMEX opening hours. But my broker said it is how AMEX deals with the orders.
4) Broker also said that if I had placed an order to sell, it would
get processed immediately. Since I placed the order to buy, it didn't get thru so fast.
Is here any trading sense from his say or he forgot to add key words?

Second, if you consider yourself a "trader" a lot of weird things happen in the pushing and shoving of the open. The specialists on the floor make a huge amount of money at this time. In this case, it wouldn't surprise me if the specialist/market maker first did a bunch of buying of opening orders (ONT opened at 1.07) and then sold to the opening buy orders at 1.16 (ONT jumped to 1.16 right after the opening) thus making 0.09 per share just for being the specialist/market maker. He has no obligation to match the orders of public buyers with public sellers. It's good to be the market maker. Traders like me always wait to see how the stock opens to get confirmation before placing an order. A lot of things can happen in the news between 1AM and the market open. Traders never put in orders and let them sit that long.

I am new to all these markets and looking to start with it.
I wanted to go for an Online Trading Company like India Bulls, Sharekhan etc.
I aim for being both a Long Term Investor in 2-3 Shares, and do regular Intra-Day Trading
I have seen India Bulls Charting system and found them to be good but don't know what are their Broker Charges, Account Opening Charges?

But there will be important pointers to what should also be considered while deciding on the trading platform. So here goes.
I have personal experience with ICICIDirect, HDFC Securities and Motilal Oswal. I don't trade on a daily basis and am a long term investor. So for me brokerage rates don't matter much.
For me what matters are the following:
1. Reliability of the platform -I can transact when I want
2. Correctness in transaction records, account debits, demat credits, shortfall management
3. User-friendliness of interface - you can find what you want quickly
4. Promptness of customer helpdesk in replying to emails
5. Ability to do everything from one single place - like demat account, trading account, and bank account are all managed by the same entity, so there is single place of accountability
Given all these in my experience ICICIDirect still scores the best. It has the highest no of subscribers. It used to have some transaction problems earlier, but over the past year, I cannot recollect instances where I couldn't execute a buy/sell when I wanted it. (HDFC Securities & Motilal OSwal both have miles to go on this front, systems cant keep up with the load on exceptionally high traffic days -jan 22/23). Their User interface is the best, you can locate what to do and where very fast, almost intuitively. Their transaction records are impeccable, you have peace of mind. Couldn't say the same for Motilal Oswal (I had to track and remind them to make good the shortfall when I bought and paid for 20 shares of Wyeth Pharma but demat was only for 16 after a week). And single place of accountability makes sure i deal with the same party and can get things resolved faster.
No matter what arguments you hear against, perhaps the biggest argument in favour of ICICIDirect is that they have been operating these services from 1999. That's close to a decade of experience in handling extremes of load, variety of software and technical issues, customer complaints , and have matured over the years.
The others may give you cheaper brokerage rates (and that matters if you are a day trader) but have much more to cover before they can reach similar levels of maturity as a service provider.
My 2 cents. Hope they were useful & happy investing!

I would recommend you do a lot of research before you get involved with real money. Do "pretend" investing while you study the Motley Fool site carefully. It is full of great ideas.

Also if you are looking for an online broker, I use Scottrade, they are very cheep $7 trades for market and limit orders.
Hope this helps.
That being said, with the market has been swinging up and down the way it has been in the past few months and I’d like to get in and get out quickly on certain trades.
The fact that some of these brokers expect you to to hold a position for weeks or even months is just ridiculous, especially in a market like this one.
Does day trrading affect the market in a negative way? Hell, it can’t be worse than naked short selling.
Ive found some loop holes in certain online brokers and have been able to successfully day trade but it is very hard and not really fast enough. I was wondering if anyone else knows of any online brokers that allow day trading for the small investor without heavy restriction.

the restriction is to make sure that small investors (i.e. people who don’t even have 25k) don’t lose their shirts, and cheat the IRS out of tax revenue, because you are totally inept and will have carry-forward losses for the next decade.
this, of course, gets re-packaged as concern for small investors who need protection from themselves. but don’t let that fool you - it’s all about the tax revenue. nobody really cares enough about you to bother protecting you.




