All About Stock Trading Platforms | How To – Stop Agrexco
Stock Trading Platforms are useful for people who don’t want to travel to a broker, exchange or deal with people over the phone. Luckily, there is a plethora of online Stock Trading Platforms that I have used and can tell you a little about in the scope of this article. When looking for a good Stock Trading Platform, it is important to figure out what features you expect from the platform before you go ahead and pick some out.
I have used many Stock Trading Platforms over time and the best online Stock platform I have found is optionsXpress by Charles Schwab. Of course, this is my personal best, which means that it might not be the perfect choice for everyone else reading this article. Finding your own Stock Trading Platform might take a little bit longer.
Once you know the criteria you are looking for, it gets much easier to find a stock trading platform to use for your investments. These are the most important variables to look at when finding a good stock-trading platform, rated in order of importance:
- Cost
- Variety Of Investment Types
- Research tools
- Ease of use
- Quality Of Service
Some may disagree with the order I have placed these in, as it might be worth it to exchange the order in the list for their particular style of investment but for a rookie stock trader who is looking to find a good base to start trading with, I feel these are the most important criteria.
Costs
Cost is easily the most important factor when deciding on which broker to use as the more money you spend on creating trades, the less profit you end up. Some platforms charge an overall percentage of the amount you invested, whilst others just charge a flat fee. Make sure you do your research before. I have seen numerous people get stung from large fees.
Availability
Some online brokers and service providers will only allow trading on certain markets or certain types of stocks. If you are aiming to create a very varied portfolio of stocks, options and other investments in the international stock markets, you need to make sure that your Trading platform supports the types of trades that you wish to use. If they do not, you simply cannot use those stock markets and will be limited to national stocks instead. If you are not at all interested in international stocks or alternative investment types, it’s a good way to save money, picking brokers that do not support any extra areas of the world etc.
Research tools are also a very important part of a good trading platform. Whilst you can usually find all the same information in other places, having to split your attention between disparate and conflicting sources of information can be tiring, take extra time and lead to losses, stress and less profit when you do manage to piece the information together. Choosing a great trade platform that collates all the information needed allows you the peace of mind necessary to make logical trading choices.
GUI And Ease Of Use
Ease of Use is a highly contentious point among the different platforms for trading. Whilst those with simpler GUI’s may make it easier on the eyes for those who are not necessarily used to seeing the technical information needed to trade in a competitive market, the simplification of the GUI that some online platforms that use can make it more difficult to use in the long run.
You should be looking for an interface that is modular and can be as simple or as complicated as you are comfortable with. Whilst the other points my list are highly important, this one is a little more subjective. Some people do not mind complicated and busy GUI’s whereas others cannot get along with them and are more likely to find a different provider than learn to live with the interface provided by some investment platforms.
Quality of Service
Quality of service is something that is not as important as the rest of the criteria. I find that if the customer service is lacking, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the service itself will be poor. Whilst it is nice to have any problems ironed out quickly and efficiently, online trading platforms have such large amounts of competitions nowadays that any company that has poor customer service will lose most of their customers in no time as the migrate to other services.
It’s All Your Choice
The key to remember is that once you have picked a company, you don’t necessarily have to stay with them forever and you can even make accounts with multiple platforms. This allows you to get the best of both worlds, low costs from discount trading platforms and the ability to trade internationally by creating two accounts!
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All About Stock Trading Platforms | How To – Stop Agrexco
