Online Platform Advice
Ok so here's the deal....I will be graduating from college in the near future and will have a good amount of money left over in my college account. Since the leftover money is mine, my parents have agreed to give me 5,000 of it to do some of my own investing.
What I'm looking for is some advice on what online platform to use. I plan on using 2,500 to invest more long term (buy and hold for 6 months or so) and 2,500 to do some shorter term investing. (buy and hold for a few weeks/months). Also, I've been doing some research on options trading (also have an internship at a fund so I've been talking to the PM some) so I expect to be involved in that as well and potentially get involved with some futures contracts.
Anyway, I've looked at tradeking, TOS, OH as well as Etrade, Scottrade etc. Right now, I'm leaning towards optionshouse because it seems the be the cheapest. However, I'm curious to see what you guys think. Also, I'm a little worried about the speed/ease of transactions w/respect to the smaller platforms. Is this a legit concern? Finally, how easy is it to fund/set up an account at these websites?
If you're looking for cheap and pretty good quality, I'd lean towards lightspeed trading. Specifically use their web trader platform since it's geared more towards what you're doing (it only lets you do stocks + options). Last I checked, stocks were 40 cents per 100 shares and options were $1 per contract. To put this into perspective, scottrade charges $7 per stock trade, so the break even compared to lightspeed @40 cents/100 shares is 1750 shares.
If you want a more pimped out platform that's geared more towards day traders, you can use their trader platform, but they charge you data fees ($1 for your basic exchange data, I think $12 for level 2 data, and $60 I think for options). I don't recommend the trader platform because the fees will eat too much into your profits, considering you only have $5000.
Optionshouse has a neat virtual trading platform which is basically their regular platform with about $5000 of virtual funds to invest. You can play around with it to get a feel for their trade execution speed, and figure out if it works for you.
dude if you are a buy and hold trader it dosen't matter wtf you use
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