How to find and use the best online stocks trading platforms?

update: 2/1/22

Choosing an online broker platform is one of the most important decision you will make as an investor. And the most powerful tool in your hands..
Every trader has it’s own investment style of trading, and abundance of brokers’ offers allow individuals to choose what best fits their needs.
If you’re an active trader looking to try your hand at beating the markets, you probably have a good idea of what you want from a brokerage: low costs, premium research, innovative strategy tools and a rich with features trading platform.

The era of online stock brokers makes the world as high-risk/high-reward investing available to the wide public.

Profitable investing takes time and a lot of hard work.

It also requires you to use a brokerage service that fits your investing goals, educational needs, and learning style.

If you are new investors, selecting the right online brokerage can mean the difference between a breathtaking new income stream and a short-lived struggle against disappointment, followed by inevitable frustrating handover.

You have to know one thing, there’s no sure-fire way to guarantee investment returns, but there is a way to set yourself up for success by selecting the online brokerage that best suits you.
We’ll try to show you all the important things you should be looking for in your ideal brokerage on your path to find the best online broker.

For a starter, take a moment to focus in on what is most important to you in a trading platform, before you start clicking on brokerage ads.

You’ll be surprised!

The most important is to recognize your own needs.

You must know them.

If you are the novice, you may prioritize things such as basic educational resources, large glossaries, easy access to support service or the ability to have practice trades before you start playing with real money.

A really experienced investor, possibly someone who executed hundreds of trades already but is looking for a new broker, is going to prioritize advanced charting capabilities, conditional order options or the ability to trade derivatives, mutual funds, commodities, and fixed-income securities, as well as stocks.

And you have to be honest with yourself about where you are right now in your investing tour and where you want to go. Do you want to try your hand at day-trading but don’t know where and how to start? Do you like the idea of tailoring your own portfolio, or you want to pay a professional to provide it done right?

For now, we suggest you start with these crucial deliberations as a way to determine which of the brokerage features would be the most important to you.

To help yourself to find and use the best online stocks trading platforms be honest when you are answering these questions.
a) How much do you already know?
Obviously, no one knows everything. But the question is how comfortable you feel when risking your own funds. Again, we encourage you to start with a demo account (you can find at the end of this book a link to a demo account).
b) What kind of trades will you want to execute?
Stocks? Forex? Crypto? Daily?
c) Are you an active or passive investor?
Are you the type of person who can start a trade, let it go with its strategy and leave it aside, or you’re the type of person who checks his portfolio daily, read about it, sign up to newsletters, etc.
d) What kind of help do you need?
Do you need help on learning how to trade? On what to trade? Recommendations? Or maybe you want to do it all by yourself?
e) What are your goals?
This is an important question. Your goal is to make a profit, of course. But, how much you’re willing to lose? How “hard and dangerous” your trades look? How much profit you want to gain and monetize and how much you want to leave at your broker account to use for more money? These questions will act as your guidelines.
Be brutally honest with yourself about how much time, energy, and effort you are willing to put into your investments. Your answers may change over time, no one can anticipate all their needs and goals for the rest of the life. Just start with where you are right now and go with the flow.

Pay attention to several more things such as:

* Does the brokerage website offer two-factor authentication
* Do they clearly explain how they use encryption or “cookies” to protect your account information and how they work?
* Try searching the web for reviews of the brokerage, using keywords like “insurance claim”, “fraud protection”, “customer support”, “chargebacks”, “easy withdrawal”
* Will the company reimburse you for losses resulting from fraud? etc.

And then test the broker’s platform.

We recommend you trying out our preferred trading platform, for free. In this link can open a free demo account with virtual $100,000.
Your capital is at risk.

Every brokerage should have a decent description of what kinds of tools and resources its trading platform offers.
But sometimes the best way to evaluate platform quality is to give it a test drive.

For brokers that allow you to open an free or demo account, it might be worth the effort to go through the signup process just to access and test the trading platform.