I'm 17 and I have 500 dollars I want to trade and hopefully make a decent profit. Since I'm dealing with a small amount of money I was wondering what brokers have cheap enough commissions so that the commission doesn't eat my profit away. Please respond asap thank you
I don't recommend you start trading with $500. If you insist, maybe scottrade is the best. Unless that money is your gambling money and you would giggle if you lose, don't even start. For a round trip trade, you need to pay $14 and if you want to make $14 as profit, you will need to make $28 which is about %6 which is almost impossible. So you might ask how much is a bare start? I would say, not less than 25K.
Buy $500 in Powerball tickets. Your odds will be better of getting something back and it's something you'll always remember with a smile and a giggle.
Take $250 open an account at Oanda, take the other $250 and open a poker account at Full Tilt or Pokerstars and whichever account you still have a balance with after 30 days stick with that.
Newbie, as others have implied, $500 is simply too small to start with. If you're looking to get into the trading game quickly, I suggest you consider an aggressive call/bear put spread on some stock of your choice. If you can execute it and trade it properly, then you will have 4x the capital. Do it again and you'll have $8000. That's a much healthier initial capital value to begin trading, albeit still undercapitalized in my opinion. Cheers
Update I now have 3000 in capital and I find I am More flexible in my options. Should I consider ib now?
50k is a solid starting point, keep in mind that you will lose money maybe for 3 to 5 years, before you really learn how to make money consistently and trade full time.
3-5 years? 50K? What planet are you from. 5-10k should be max loss during learning period, which should be between 6 months-1 year. If you're trading for 2.5 years and still not making money you do NOT belong in the business. If you can't, after learning the ropes, build a 5 or 10k account into healthy 5 or 6 figures, you also don't belong in the business...
NewbieT: You need to understand or define what you mean by "trading." Search this site for "Pattern Day Trader" (PDT) or do a web search. Once you understand what a PDT is, evaluate what you want\will be able to do. Also, and I'm not really sure, but can you have your own account at 17? In general 18 is considered "legal age" for most anything but alcohol. Jack