You may be anywhere in the world, but trading in stocks is always a few clicks away, just ensure that the broker you choose is capable of providing seamless and lightening fast services.

What made me open an account with Scottrade?

Why should you trade with OptionsHouse?

• The background of the broker is a matter of concern. The way you investigate before purchasing stock, similarly you need to find about the reputation of the broker.
• See if you have an access to their site. Try visiting the website of a company at several times all through the day, especially during peak traffic hours. Be vigilant how rapidly their site is being loaded and verify some of the links to guarantee there are no technological complicatedness.
• Substitute business offers flexibility. Though net is easily accessible, we cannot be forever on the computers. Check the additional choices the firm is offering for the introduction of the trade. Other options may comprise of fax ordering, touch-tone telephone trades, or talking to an agent over the mobile phone.
• Concession is not at all times offers you an attractive deal. Think about initializing with a broker that gives you full time service. They are most ideal for the investors who are new to this field and who need to put up confidence and information about the markets.
• The person who is offering low prices is certainly not good. Do not start with an account with an agent purely as he offers the minimum commission price.
• The selection of the Product is very significant. When decide a brokerage, majority of the people are viewing largely the buying stocks. Keep in mind that there are a lot of savings options that are not essentially provided by each company.
• Lowest deposits might not be smallest. Be vigilant as to how much of an opening deposit the company needs for initiating an account. Be cautious of sky-scraping least balances: some organizations necessitate approximately $10,000 to begin with.
• What type of the service is being provided to the customer is of utmost importance. It is very bugging if you have to wait every time for 20 minutes for assistance.
• You are expected to have a little cash in your brokerage account always. Some brokerages will present with 3-5% interest for the money, while others do not give you a single penny. Call up or send a mail to find out what they are offering.
• Extra services can certainly make a lot of variation. Always try to be on a look out for additional benefits by brokerages before initiating an account.

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So, what is your next step?

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Ever since Charles Schwab lowered their commission rates for online trading & other brokerage firms joined the bandwagon of cutting the brokerage fees, I have been wondering about this topic. Are we slowly moving towards converting the whole discount brokerage industry into a commodity market?

What is commodity Market?

The economic definition of commodity market is a truly capitalist market where there is perfect competition because of presence of hundreds of direct / indirect competitors. The profit margins of such industries is tending to zero. Everyone is a bulk producer. Typical examples of commodity market is the agricultural industry. There is no product differentiation or brand loyalty. The company who manufactures the component with the cheapest rates is the most profitable in the industry. A few other industries which are tending towards becoming commodity markets are Airline Industry and Automobile Industry. Such industries are often associated with massive price wars. The examples of which we see on TV everyday with several thousand dollars in cash backs on the latest car models. You got to stop and wonder what in the world is going on with the marketing heads in such companies. Well the answer is simple; due to the competition, if you do not lower your cost and not offer crazy deals to buyers, you are set to lose your market share.

What is the future for Brokerage Industry

Brokerage industry traditionally was very far from such a structure. Investors worked with a real person who made sure your wealth is in safe hands. But then started coming the power of technology. People were replaced by online platforms which could be used by investors for trading. Companies started developing new trading tools and faster platforms to establish brand presence. The last 5 years was such a period. If you look at the recent history over past few years, fastest growing brokerage firms have been started very very recently. Now these firms are posing a major threat to established organizations a lethal threat. This threat is no different than what Toyota and Honda did to US automakers in early 90s. They slow started and quickly ramped up to defeat them for the top position in terms of sales and consumer confidence.

Why is Brokerage Industry Heading towards Commodity Market

As technology grew further and wider almost all brokerage firms were offering the same high quality tools to everyone. So who is the winner? Now it seems pretty apparent that consumers started switching brokerage firms and went more for cheaper prices than brand loyalty because brand did not matter when all the product offering are all same. In my personal opinion, some of these new brokerage firms such as TradeKing, Zecco are breaking the rules and creating innovative platforms and leaving behind earlier market leaders such as Charles Schwab & Scottrade. The established players started seeing a drop in trading activities as people switched to new entrants. The initial offers were short teasers like open a bank account and get $100 free stock trades or 10 stock trades free every month. However in the latest price wars companies are slashing their prices left right and center.

Which brokerage firms are leading the movement

E-trade was the latest to join the price war by slashing the rates its charges its non frequent customers to $ 9.99 from $ 12.99. The wars began with Charles Schwab reducing its rates to $ 8.99 from $ 12.99 . Fidelity followed soon after by dropping rates to $ 7.95 from $ 8 to $19.99 pricing. This means that companies have reduced their revenues by as much as 30% in last one month. This is also reflective in their share prices. E-trade has dropped 17% and Charles Schwab has dropped 8% in last one month.

What does it mean for investors

This is hence the right time for consumers to look at the brokers which provide cheapest rates and open accounts with them. As we mentioning earlier, since the brokerage industry has become a commodity it does not matter if you open a particular brand. Go for the lowest rates. Tradeking, Zecco or Options House would be our recommendations.

1. OptionsHouse is currently running special ads for 100 Free Trades if you open your account before April 30th. On top of that, they are the cheapest as far as the commission rates go.

Get 100 Free Trades with OptionsHouse.com

2. TradeKing is the top Rated Broker by SmartMoney – 4 years running (2006-2009). It also got 4-Star Rated Broker by Barron’s – 12th Annual Survey of Best Browser-Based Online Brokers. All that is available for low flat fees – $4.95 per trade plus $.65 per options contract

Open an account with Trading King – Tradeking

3. Zecco:Best thing about Zecco is their 10 free trades every month if you make 25 trades in a month. Hence your effective rate actually becomes a lot lower than what they advertise which is 4.5$/trade. Their effective rate comes down to 2.70$ / trade, now who can beat that? See details below:

Trade with Zecco for Free

There is an interesting price war going on currently in the market between top online stock brokerage firms. Just to provide some background on this front, please read this article which mentions how Charles Schwab went about lowering their commission rates for stock investing and how its affecting the entire industry.

Charles Schwab Rates Cut, Sets Price War

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This price was is taking a big toll on some of the largest players in the industry. Please keep in mind some of these brokerage firms are publicly traded companies. Fidelity investments was the latest brokerage firm to enter price wars after Charles Schwab had reduced their rates to a flat 8.95 per trade three weeks earlier. Fidleity has reduced its rates to 7.95 per trade which now lower than the three big players in online brokerage industry namely E-trade, Chareles Schwab abd TD- Ameritrade. The stocks of these companies fell by 4% in trading today when the entire market was up.

The anaylst at comparebroker are contnually monitoring the price wars and would be bringing you updates . For now their anaylsis still recommends using Tradeking , Zecco or Options House for discount trading because under $5 rates and decent service. A quick glance at the offers from the three firms are below:

1. OptionsHouse is currently running special ads for 100 Free Trades if you open your account before April 30th. On top of that, they are the cheapest as far as the commission rates go.

Get 100 Free Trades with OptionsHouse.com

2. TradeKing is the top Rated Broker by SmartMoney – 4 years running (2006-2009). It also got 4-Star Rated Broker by Barron’s – 12th Annual Survey of Best Browser-Based Online Brokers. All that is available for low flat fees – $4.95 per trade plus $.65 per options contract

3. Zecco:Best thing about Zecco is their 10 free trades every month if you make 25 trades in a month. Hence your effective rate actually becomes a lot lower than what they advertise which is 4.5$/trade. Their effective rate comes down to 2.70$ / trade, now who can beat that? See details below:

Trade with Zecco for Free

At Compare Broker our analysts are always on their toes and they analyze the market and provide their opinion on critical events around the globe.

Congress lately has been looking at Obama administration’s decision to increase the powers of Fed as a financial regulator. Before it gives a clean chit to Fed, the Congress should examine the links between Fed and Goldman Sachs.

It is a well known fact that most of the Fed presidents have former executive at Goldman. The involvement of Fed in allowing Goldman to get a bank status last year was also questioned by media but never followed up. Goldman has had the status for about 9 months but still does not have a single retail banking branch open. Fed took less than 24 hrs to grant the status to Goldman but never cared if Goldman is following the guidelines required by any bank. It enabled Goldman to have access to around $10 billion in TARP funds and $ 5 billion in TALF funds. It has still not gone out of the TALF program and is talking about giving record bonuses.

Many people would say at least the bank is making money especially seeing the second quarter earnings. That is true but where is the money coming from. It has been free money donated by government. All the securities that government wrote down for TARP and TALF funds were underwritten by Goldman Sachs. Hence Goldman got hefty amount of commission though tax payers money.

People would still say that the bank is at least working in favor of its investors. Is that true ? The government backed TARP money was available to Goldman at 5% interest rate. Warren Buffet gave Goldman the same amount of money $10 billion at 10% interest rates with much stricter conditions. A company truly working for the benefit of its shareholders would consider repaying the higher interest loan first. The only reason why they paid lower interest loan first. It had put a cap on the bonuses it can pay out to the top executives in the company. How is that fair?

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At Cheap Online Discount Brokers our analysts are always on their toes and they analyze the market and provide their opinion on critical events around the globe.

Many of our frequent readers have asked us if we can predict the future of US economy. Well to be honest, the answer is no one can. We are in a situation where we have never been before. The total money flow in the system is of historic proportions. However we did some research and have aggregated the opinions of noted economist in this article.

So what is in future as far as the US & World economy is concerned? If you ask this question to an economist, he/she will never be able to provide one answer. So the current hypothesis is that there is a 50% probability that this is a U shaped recession. Which means we are at the bottom which would remain anywhere between 6 months to 2 years. There is a 30% probability this is a W shaped recession. Meaning that the current period is the calm before the storm. If that is correct, it’s obviously advisable to pull money out of the market at the first sign of a downturn. We would see a massive fall in the economy in October. The recession would last for another 6 months; we would see recovery after that. The third scenario (saving the worst for the last) is an L shaped recession. This basically means that there would be massive stagflation and there would be no growth in US economy for next 10 years.

So what determines which one of 3 above outcomes to happen?

1.) Oil prices: US economy needs oil prices in the range of 60-70 dollars for the economy to recover. If they go above $100 all small industries would perish since the raw material cost would go up. If it falls below $50, new research in alternative energy would not occur. Hence no new growth projects will be seen.

2.) What happens to excess money flow: A big reason why the economy has not gone further down in last 3 months is the massive interference by the governments of all countries. Economists know that pumping money into recession is a must. But no one has a clue of when and how to pull it back. If the money is not pulled back at right time, it can lead to serious stagflation problems.

3.) Innovation: In the end every economy has gown due to some innovation or other. In the prehistoric times it was fire and agriculture. Arabs grew due to trade. Europeans grew due to internal combustion engine. Americans grew due to Assembly lines and efficient manufacturing. There are several industries which have the capability of growth biotechnology, smart phones, alternative energy, and green jobs. It would be seen which among these is able to drive the next era of growth.

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Trading stocks in stocks is a profitable financial exercise that can reap great benefits if one knows the market and has enough experience of trading in stocks. Those who can judge the ups and downs in the financial market and work out their finances accordingly earn great money from trading stocks. While for other who are new to the field and inexperienced in trading stocks, getting help of a professional stock trading broker becomes a necessity.

Choosing a professional and qualified stock trading broker is essential for people who are new to the field of stock trading as it can be difficult for them to know whether the prices of a stock are going to rise in future or fall. Without this information, they might make a wrong decision by buying or selling stocks and suffer huge losses. A stock trading broker who works either independently or with a firm can guide a person on matters of sales and purchase of stocks.

Also, it is not possible for anyone to start trading stocks in the stocks market, for this reason it is imperative to get help of a brokerage firm. A brokerage firm that employs stock trading brokers can give an investor a good idea of the stock market condition by stock analysis, comparison and research into the trends in the stock market. A stock trading broker from a professional firm can even provide personal guidance and advice regarding the investment decisions that one needs to make.

At CompareBroker.com, new and experienced investors can compare a range of brokerage firms that suit their budget and requirement. The website has an extensive database of brokerage firms that an investor can search and choose from. Instead of spending time online in searching for the perfect brokerage firm, CompareBroker.com provides you with a chance to get the best stock trading deals through experienced brokers. Browse through www.comparebroker.com for more information.