After you have spent some time in the practice environment and decide you’re ready to start trading real money, you must decide where you would like to manage your money at. There are many places throughout the Internet where you can buy and sell real stock with real money. One such place is with Scottrade.
One of the biggest selling points for Scottrade is that they have a flat rate commission of just seven dollars on all trades where the stock price is over one dollar and the order is placed over the Internet. They also offer their customers the option of placing trades over the phone through a touch-tone system or with the assistance of a broker. Although these last two options cost a bit more, the fees are still on a flat-rate system.
Another nice benefit to trading with Scottrade is that there are no inactivity or account maintenance fees. This is in contrast to other brokers where you may be charged a fee if you make too many or not enough trades in a given period of time. Scottrade gives you the flexibility to trade if and when you want without having to worry about whether it is going to cost you more in fees.
In an effort to target those who are new to the world of investing real money in the stock market, Scottrade allows you to open an account with as little as $500. This low minimum balance requirement makes it affordable for just about anyone to setup an account and become an investor in the stock market.
Scottrade has over 400 branch offices nationwide, which allows them to offer more personalized assistance and better customer service than other online stockbrokers. Compared to their competition, Scottrade has a lower minimum balance requirement, lower commissions, lower fees, and more personalized assistance making them a great choice for both new and experienced investors.
Scottrade also offers several trading and research tools to assist their customers with portfolio management tasks. For example, they give their customers the ability to buy and sell stock directly from any Palm-compatible device, WAP-enabled cell phone, or PocketPC. They also grant customers access to stock and company research as well as screening tools to help with selecting investment opportunities.
If you have decided to move from the practice environment to the real-world, Scottrade may be worth looking into.