whats the easiest way to trade stocks?

[Aharami]

stock newb here. so go easy

 

[bigdog1218]

Datek, Etrade, Ameritrade are the big three for online. Check out the websites.

 

[astroview]

Without a broker, sure it's easy but you can't invest in all the stocks that exist in the market. What you want are direct stock purchase plans or direct investment plans, aka buying stock direct from the copmany or their agent. Usually these are blue chip companies, ones that have been around for a while.

(FYI scottrade.com has no fees on mutual fund investments)

Check out:

www.netstockdirect.com (a lot of their fees are changed, so verify them)
www.equiserve.com (nice small selection, several stocks with no fee)
www.dripinvesting.org (the message board under community is quite good, will point you in the right direction)

If a stock requires you to buy a share of stock you can find out how to do that for cheap at dripinvesting.org.

The best thing about investing without a broker is the lower or in many cases ZERO fees. Having low fees works out best in the long term, its nice to beat the S&P but it sucks knowing your broker was churning you and you are losing money that way. No fee is the way to go.

Remember stocks are risky, so read up a few books on them before investing in anything. It'll be good to know what P/E, mrq, EBITDA... mean if you don't already. Check out fool.com for a decent intro to a lot of this stuff. Before investing in stocks, it might be best to see if you can do it in a retirement account like a 401(k) or a Roth IRA. That way you can get interest free growth.


And I'll sign off by saying, i'm not liable for whatever you decide to do! Buyer beware.

 

[fs5]

scottrade, $7 a trade