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Online Stocks Shares Trading Sites

Stock Charts - Online Stock Trading Sites

A List of Online Stock Trading Sites with Price Quotes

If you are new to online stock trades, and stock charts the first thing you are going to need to do if you want to actually buy stocks is to open an online share trading account with one of the online brokers to allow you to buy and sell stocks in real time and get real time quotes and real time stock prices, they are the sort of brokers who offer cheap online trading but don't expect any stock tips of course, as they will be execution only services.

You might wonder if investing in the stock market is such a good idea at the moment, given that we are in the middle of a worldwide economic recession and credit crunch, and things have rarely been so bad. Well, there are some who would argue that this is precisely the time to be considering getting in to the stock market, as things have got so bad they can hardly get any worse.
Warren Buffett, aka the Oracle of Omaha aka the most successful investor of all time, for one, has been investing. He says to invest when others are fearful, and due to the amount of fear in the market that is precisely what he has been doing, since October, for the first time in years. Bear in mind that he invests for the long term (i.e. at least 5 years) and that he has $60 billion dollars to cushion him if things should go even more pear-shaped than they already are. But he does argue that in the long-term stock markets go up!

There are others, however, who say the stock markets have further to fall. Some say the S&P could drop to 600 and the lowest figure I've heard mentioned so far is 500. At the moment the S&P is around 850 so these people are talking about another 25% or 30% fall, which is not peanuts, so bear all this in mind and don't jump in with both feet.

So, without further ado, here is a list of online stock trading sites who will be more than happy to open an account for you. I can't make any personal recommendation, as I haven't opened an account with any of them, my account at the moment is with TDWaterhouse, but I can't recommend TDWaterhouse as I am in dispute with them at the moment, so I haven't included them in the list. The main criteria you need to take into account when choosing an online broker are 'honesty' and 'reliability'. I will be looking around myself to open an account with just such an online trading service in the very near future.

All I have done with these online brokers is to check that their sites are still up and running.

Online Stock Trading Sites in North America
Etrade.com
Schwab.com
Fidelity.com
Zecco.com
TradeKing.com
ScotTrade.com
FirstTrade.com
Marsco.com
corporate.TRowePrice.com
OptionsExpress.com
ThinkorSwim.com
ShareBuilder.com
GFtForex.com
Forex.com
DBfx.com

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Friday

Stocks for Beginners

Investing Online - Stock Market For Beginners

Investment Strategy

Reasons to buy stocks

The first post on the Stock Market for Beginners - a new venture for optimistic souls who believe (or hope) the stock market will soon be bottoming out. According to many we are going through a bottoming process, according to some we have already seen the bottom and according to others we ain't seen nothing yet !

As I write we have just seen the worst US unemployment numbers in living memory - an increase of 533,000 - worse than most people were expecting and yet the DOW is up 273 the NASDAQ is up 56 and the S&P is up 29 ! So maybe that's a sign that the market is finally turning. Up on bad news.

Personally, I will put my neck on the line and say we are somewhere near the bottom (i.e. within 15% - so the DOW could fall back to around 6800 - UPDATE the DOW fell back to 6500 in March 2009) and we may start to see the recovery in January. I'm not confident that we will see the famous Santa Claus Rally this year. [Update the DOW is now around 7100 and heading lower - - Citigroup has more or less been nationalized Goldman Sachs says 6000 to come on the DOW before this is over] - this despite the fact that the Oracle of Omaha said it was time to buy stocks back in October when the DOW was around 8200. I personally expect to see somewhere around 6600 on the DOW soon.] [UPDATE : the stock markets appear to have bottomed out in early March and have recovered sharply since, though many people now expect the markets to fall back and re-test the lows seen in March]

So watch this space, this is the first post just to set the ball rolling. Stick me in your bookmarks, who knows I might say something useful !