I just pay I to my 403b retirement account that I get a 6% match on from my agency.

When I make more money I'll invest. Kids and student loans sucking me dry.

I'm getting another job...have an interview next week for a place I'll be able to freely schedule clients to see on every available hour. Hopefully I can make some bucks while expanding my skillset.

This post was edited by Skinned on Jan 3 2017 12:39pm

Scottrade, 7$

Only done one trade so far

the one most suited for you will depend on the frequency of your trading and the amounts you are investing
for instance, platforms like scottrade, td, merrill edge etc have a fee with each transaction (that is, buying a share, selling that same share, etc). most of these range from $7-8/transaction fee. optionshouse is cheaper @ $5/transaction. so you have to factor this into every trade you make, which can hamper your ability to profit depending on the size (in $) of your investments.
example: invest $300 in total on a company, stock goes up so your holding is now $400 and you sell, but you factor in the ~$15s you lose on fee so your profit goes from 100-15 --> 85, a 15% cut.

for larger trades this wont matter as much, say you add 1-2 zeros to your investment above (making it $3000 or $30000), the ~$15 fees are more negligible. also if youre just buying and holding for long periods too. in addition, some of these platforms, such as merrill edge can give you some cheaper trading 'pricing' (ie: in the form of free or discounted trades) if you are a banking customer with their affiliate/bank etc (for merill its bank of america and you need a large amount of $ in your bank accounts to qualify)

robinhood is decent due to its near-nothing fees but has some serious drawbacks for some seasoned investors. a good site is nerdwallet that covers the online brokers and their various attributes: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/category/investing/?trk=nw_gn_4.0

Thanks. From what I'm gathering for a newb like me that's not prepared to invest 5 figures a site like robinhood is best. I don't plan on day trading and honestly even if investing four figures paying 5-10 dollar per transaction seems high.

You would be surprised at how insignficant the transaction fees are. You would be surprised at how easy it is for your account to increase, but on the flip side, how easy it is for your money to be gone completely.



Investing so little that your transaction fees are hurting you should probably make you think twice about stock trading and you would be better off putting your money into a Roth IRA.

This post was edited by stupidkid282 on Jan 3 2017 05:42pm

in general i agree with this. good post.

I like ETrade. Very easy to navigate, moderate transaction fees, and I'd say an above average selection of investments.

Edit: ETrade also does have quite a few no transaction fee funds.

This post was edited by RzChaos on Jan 3 2017 06:18pm

Totally sold and made 15 whole dollars today. I mean, yeah, its only 15$, but it's 5%! If I can do that every week for the year I'll have tons of money!

That's how it works right? I can just always do the same thing and make 5%?

So a flood of legal pot investment articles are popping up on my news feeds. Any actually worth the investment? I see people flooding them and their value disappearing.

Not bad on a 300 dollars investment. I have 10 grand sitting in my savings account that's earned a total of 2 dollars if i can make a 5% return in a year on that money I would be exctatic. I'm just too chicken to invest because of my lack of knowledge about the market. I need to get my stock market game up.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Jan 4 2017 04:51pm