Online Stock Trading - Which Website Offers the Best Rates?

In this day and age, almost everything is moving over to the internet. Stock trading is no exception. Online trading offers a lot of great advantages, especially for beginners looking to just get started.

Being a young college student, I wanted to jumpstart by financial status by starting to invest some of the money I earned working an internship. After reading books and looking on the internet, I quickly found that online trading is the best option for someone like me. The internet allows you to be your own stock broker, which can save you a lot of money in brokerage fees. It also allows you to buy fractional shares of stock, for those who are on a tight budget but still want to buy into their favorite companies.

The most known online stock trading website is Sharebuilder.com. They run countless TV ads and can be seen in most financial magazines. I originally started out by investing with Sharebuilder and had an enjoyable experience with them. There are a couple types of services including basic, bronze and gold. I used the basic service which has no monthly fees but charges $4.00 per automatic trade. Automatic trades allow you to setup a portfolio and have it invest once a month, biweekly, or weekly depending on your preference. However, if you every want to buy/sell shares in real-time, it will cost you $15.00 per trade. This can add up very quickly, especially if you are only dealing with limited amounts of money. Because of this, I recently switched to a new service, known as Sogoinvest.com.

Sogoinvest.com is a rather new company based in New York City. What made me decide to switch was the rates they offer. Upon signing up, you will receive a 90 day promotional package which allows you to buy and sell stocks for only $1.00, in real-time! This is 1/15^th the cost of Sharebuilder.com. It works very well if you want to buy shares for short amounts of time and then sell them for a profit. Once the 90 day promotion is up, the fees will increase to $3.00 unless you sign up for a gold or silver package. However, this is still 1/5^th the cost of Sharebuilder.com.

Overall, I would recommend anyone that is starting out in the investing world, to check out both Sharebuilder and SogoInvest. Sharebuilder offers more tutorials and information but Sogo has the best rates hands down.