Day Trading

I use Scottrade and love it! The stream from Scott works great. I don't know about BofA, but I suspect it's comparable. I'd think again about using Scottrade, they do one thing only and are very good at it. BofA does hundreds of things, some good, some not so good.

Yes as long as you have a margin account…. but the "I don't know much about retail accounts" tells me you don't need to be on the short side of the market. There are other requirements to short and it varies broker to broker.

I use interactivebrokers.com because they are by far the cheapest, but they are not nearly as user friendly as most. Optionsxpress has great tools, virtual trading and good learning items but your at 9.99 on both sides of the trade. Ive also heard good things about think or swim, schwab, and scottrade too. It all depends on how much hand holding you need in your trading.

Good luck

We are of like mind, but because I only have $10,000 to invest, I'm forced to Day Trade index futures. I'm not a Day Trader, but have been a position trader off and on for 15 years, mostly with options and futures. Tough game for the little guy with weak hands.

Check outthis link at TerraNova Online. The Investor platform is an escellent trading tool for a beginner, and is limited to one screen. I use RealTick and five screens, but it costs $250/mo. Ask about a free trial.

http://terranovaonline.com/

A lot of online brokerages claim to give you direct access, but if they take more than a second to execute your trade, it aint direct.

Find the articles online that have evaluated and compared online brokerages. I found a good one online in Barron's, but you'll find others in the trading magazines.

This is worth putting a little time and effort into, because it's a pain to switch, so once you choose, you're kinda stuck with it.

Townsend Electronics, the Parent company of TerraNova, is the one that digitized and electronified the Nasdaq. They are technological industry leaders and have a powerful and well built trading system.

What you should try is a free trial of their Investor platform, which I think is free anyway. Their rates are good also, but of course, it depends on how often you trade. It will take you months to learn all the bells and whistles of what this program can do.

The other top-of-the line program is TradeStation, but it costs big bucks to join and operate. Some people consider it the Cadillac of trading and technical analysis.

TerraNova is the home of the Day Trader, so they think nothing of you making several hundred trades a day. You don't have to do that, but it's okay here if you do.

Read vociferously:
"Which Is Better, Buy-and-Hold or Market Timing?"

"Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Market Timer

The Beginner's Bible in Technical Analysis is:
Edwards & McGee"Tech. Anal. Of Stock Trends"

Droke, ClifTechnical Analysis Simplified

Kahn, Michael N.Tech. Anal. Plain & Simple

Kamich, Bruce M.How Technical Analysis Works

Lefevre, EdwinReminiscences of a Stock Operator

Lofton, ToddGetting Started in Futures

Lowenstein, RogerBuffet (Warren)-The Making of a Capitalist

O'Neil, William J.How to Make Money in Stocks

Oz, TonyHow to Make Money From Wall Street

Rotella, Robert P.Elements of Successful Trading, The

Schwager, JackStock Market Wizards

Schwager, Jack D.New Market Wizards

Sperandeo, VictorTrader Vic-Methods of a Wall Street Master

Wasendorf, RussellAll About Futures

Slutsky, Scot and Darrell JobmanComplete Guide to Electronic Futures Trading

You can get every one of these books from your local library. If they don't have it, ask about Interloan Library System.

Go read some online articles that compare the main platforms. Just do an online search for "online brokerage comparisons" or something like that. I reccommend Scottrade as the trades are about as cheap as you will get. The downside is their margin rates are above average and I've seen mixed reports on their speed of filling trades. Still for me, they are perfect (but maybe not for you).

Etrade is supposed to allow you to trade on 4 or 5 stock marktes around the world – a huge advantage for a really smart investor or one that wants to focus on international stocks, but useless to most smaller investors (or most that want to focus on mutual funds – like you, maybe).

There are some other good ones. You'll find that OptionExpress is very good (never used this one myself, but they are well rated). More expensive that scottrade but margin rates are lower and maybe they are faster at filling trades.

Anyhow, thats my take on 3 of them but there are many more out there. Of course only used ones that are sipc insured, and again – I'd advise searching for more specifics on this via an online search. FYI, I think kiplingers had an areticle about this about 1-2 years ago. good article but alot can change in 2 years (and I'm not positive it was Kiplingers)

Best luck.

Check out Scottrade, you can even do limit orders for $7/trade and they have a great trading system.

Federal law stipulates that in order to day trade, buy and sell a security the same day 3 times within a 3 day period, you must have an account valued at $25,000 or greater.

In order to simply open an account… with scottrade your $1000 is plenty.

I have Scottrade. They execute in real-time. I could be watching streaming quotes-when my price is triggered, it will pop up on the screen.

In every market transaction there's a buyer and a seller. Just because at some point today there was a buyer at that price doesn't mean that there's currently someone that wants to buy (your) shares at that price. Also, when or if someone does decide that they want to buy your shares at .10, they won't necessarily want 5,000 shares. You could set your shares to sell all or nothing, meaning that unless someone wants 5,000 shares the trade will not execute. The advantage of course is that you don't get hacked to death with commissions. The disadvantage is if someone wants 4,999 shares your trade won't execute. With all of that said, penny stocks are a very dangerous game which I would STRONGLY advise against. If you want to gamble with cheap securities, learn a little bit about options and start trading out of the money calls and puts on companies you like and don't like respectively. Hope that helped.

One other thing, I use scottrade and am very happy with them.

Http://www.thinkorswim.com/

There's a special address for Canadians, https://www.thinkorswimcanada.com/.

Simply the best for swing trading stocks and options. There's even an audio program all day (9:15-11:30AM & 1:30-4:00PM, EST) . The program also answers questions on specific technical questions (on specific stocks) & there's a video/chart which you can see the "ShadowTrader" actually show what he's referring to.

The platform is great (really great!!!). Charts are great (both TOS and Profet). Service is great.

They have many conditional order types including;
Blast 6
One Cancells Other (great for putting in a stop and limit price at the same time).
1st Triggers next
Chose by time & date execution.
Market Close
and many more

There graphs art great. Service is great. You'll be amazed. This platform was rated #1 by Barron's in their March 2007 best online broker article ((for software based brokers).
They were an incredible hit in Las vegas at the TradersExpo this past November. More people were checking them out more than any other broker.

I've been with them since April 2007.
(I have used Schwab (active trader program), Ameritrade, Scottrade and Fidelity).

The only thing they lack is "BackTesting" and that's coming out in this month.

Other ideas for good platforms;
TradeStation (good charting, backtesting + much more)
Iinteractive Brokers (fair charting, over 40 order types).