Hi, I'm a newb looking to papertrade or at least trade very small to start to learn. From ET I found alliancetrader, they let you set up an account for as little as $500 dollars. Which I think would be great because it would keep me from making any really stupid mistakes, and if I lost it wouldn't make me want to put my fist through a wall. Anyone have any opinions or experiece with alliancetrader? anything I should look out for?
I've used Alliance for over a year now and I've never had any issues with them. There DAS Trader software is very easy to learn once you have the basics down. Some people complain about the commissions. however, I've have fairly low commission rate set up for my account. They will lower your commissions if you ask them once you open an account. Remember if your a US citizen they are the only broker I know that will let you trade for under 25K.
I use them too and they sent out a mass e-mail when they were upgrading their backoffice. In that e-mail there was about 115 addresses so I'm guessing they have 115 customers. They're good to trade with but if you're starting with only $500 (like I've been doing and currently my 2nd time around since I lost the first $500) then make sure that you don't overtrade. There is no reason to trade every single day unless a stock is really moving. Stocks have to move a whole lot to make any profit with only $500. The commisions RT (roundtrip) for about 300 shares is roughly 18 bucks.
Thanks for the tips. I'm not worried about profit at this point. The first thing I'm going to worry about is just learning to place a trade based on my criteria, with all the stops set properly. Then I'll try for consistent winning trades. Actually I'm going to try real hard not to think about money at all. I really just want to be an expert trader. This is the begining of my learning process. I'f the least that happens to me is that I lose a few thousand dollars to the learning process, I'll count myself lucky.
If you just beginning trading i suggest you only go to MBtrading or InteractiveBrokers. Alliancetrader commission is too high baring that minimum commision is USD 125 unless you trade 20 times a month. The only reason i am using AllianceTrader is the max 3 in 5 days daytrading rules which is extremely sucks...