Today, most of the stock transactions are being conducted online. It has become very important to select a good online broker, based on specific investment needs and preferences. The number of companies offering online brokerage services has increased over the years, making it very difficult to select the best online broker. Listed below are some […]
The brokerage industry is said to be the most highly regulated business field in the United States.
Brokerage firms must register with various governmental and private regulators, comply with arduous paperwork and record keeping requirements, and wade through multiple layers of red tape to gain the regulatory approval necessary just to make some of the […]
Remember the old TV show, WKRP in Cincinnati, in which the dorky Les Nessman would always give the pork bellies report?
Or how about the 1980’s movie, Trading Places, in which Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd corner the orange juice market? These are both examples of commodity trading in the popular media.
Commodity trading is one […]
For more than 100 years, Wall Street was the exclusive domain of the rich. Not only were stock trading commissions prohibitively high, but research was almost impossible for the average person to find.
You might be able to find some out-of-date stock research information at your local library, but up-to-date, real-time research data was something […]
Mutual funds are one of the financial world’s most popular investment vehicles, and for good reason.
For a relatively small investment, these funds give individual investors the ability to buy a diverse portfolio of stocks and / or other financial instruments - all in one transaction.
If you have just two or more mutual funds, […]
These type stocks have outperformed the S&P 500 for the past several years. While many market pundits preach the virtues of big cap blue chips, the fact remains that the these type stocks are almost always the best investments.
After all, companies like Microsoft (MSFT), Cisco (CSCO), and even Wal-Mart (WMT) were small cap stocks […]
There are several different kinds of stock quotes. Technically, each stock has a set of quotes at any given time. These are the bid price and the ask price. More commonly, quotes are listed as the “last price,” meaning the last price at which the stock was traded.
In the past, it was very difficult to […]
In the days before discount brokers, only the wealthy invested in stocks. After all, before discount stock brokers, commissions on trades were typically over $100.
In order to get your commission down to 1 percent, as recommended, you’d have to buy $10,000 worth of stock at a time.
The Father of All Discount Stock Brokers - […]
The dot-com boom and bust could have never taken place without the emergence of online brokers. First, there was E-Trade (ET), which was quickly followed by rival Ameritrade (AMTD). Then, veteran discounter Charles Schwab (SCHW) joined the field of online stock brokers.
Several other companies came and went during the boom and bust, and the […]
Contrary to popular belief, stocks are not just pieces of paper. When you own a portfolio of stocks, you really own tiny fractions of several companies.
If you think that this isn’t the case, just ask the lucky owners of Petco or Reebok stocks. In each company’s case, a larger company wanted to buy them. […]
