What brokerages do you recommend for new traders and why? I've read ib is too difficult to use although commissions are low.
whatever the platform, commit to being great at trading. if your commitment is lacking, then you will likely lose money. i say commitment because if a person is not willing to invest the time to learn how to use a platform effectively (not mastery, just master what you need to learn), then they put themselves at a significant disadvantage. You need all the little advantages you can get to perform on this stage. to use the old adage... you don't want to bring a knife to a gun fight (or however it goes)
Absolutely all depends on how and what you want to trade . How much money you want to fund account with. Will it be 25K or more ? If you are daytrader and you have over 25K i would go with speedtrader pro. That was my first real daytrading account http://speedtraderpro.com/about/why-speedtrader-pro/ Now i use Centerpoint securities.
It can be whatever it needs to be. 25k to 50 maybe to get started. Yup definitely I would start with paper acct for first couple of months minimum
ok not sure if Speedtrader pro offers this but my current broker does on same DAS platform for absolutely free. i would talk to broker on phone whatever you choose and be sure you are getting what you want. before signing up. On my Cernterpoint account that is well funded and i trade regularly on daily i asked my broker to add a paper trading account i can use when i am punishing myself and cannot trade real $. They can even set it up so if you lose so much a day they do not let you trade your real account. I can switch back and forth between accounts whenever i want. It is totally free, i pay no extra for it because i am already paying data and platform fees. With speedtrader pro they wave those fees if you have over a certain amount of commissions per month. i never paid any data or platform fees. What is great about speedtrader and DAS is DAS is a super light and fast platform to trade from. other brokers offer DAS too. and their are other platforms that work too, i have tried them all. And what is even more important is that you want to paper trade in simulation as closely to what you will be trading for real on. You do not want o paper trad on TOS then real trade on DAS or whatever.
There are many brokers suggested on this link https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/who-is-your-favorite-fx-broker.301046/page-13 Its an informative thread on broker discusses and member sharing their experience. Hope it helps
the best broker is the one with low commissions and good executions, who does not handhold you but forces you to overcome innate laziness. laziness is rampant among newcomers, who think that easy money is available to new comers.
Too difficult? Your thinking is already way off. Since more pros use IB than any other, I would be concerned with finding out why this is the case. There are other good ones but you want to look for the truth of important situations. Look... expect to be initially confounded wherever you go and realize most people will never be winners, no matter how hard they think they are trying. To get a good overview of what it takes, I suggest reading Traders of the New Era, a collection of mostly winning traders from recent times, but also covers orders, executions, fees, HfT, etc.