Stock investing .. what do you use?

[albireo13]

I am considering dabbling in stocks, self managed. This will be mostly for fun and only a small portion of portfolio will be involved ... < 5%.
Looking into trading services now. My goal is to keep it simple, keep fees low.
Looking to investigate dividend paying stocks.

What do other folks like to use?
Ameritrade and eTrade are just a few tools that come to mind.

Thx.

 

[DrRoy]

Fidelity is very full service.

 

[Red Badger]

Fidelity is very full service.

+1 on Fido.

For investment decisions, I rely on my Ouija board.

 

[NYEXPAT]

Interactive Brokers or Robinhood come to mind.

 

[sengsational]

Fidelity, at the time, was $6 per trade and Vanguard was $2, so I opened a Roth on Vanguard.


I don't use any research or screens or tools on the site, just execute simple long trades. The tracking is all done by pasting confirm data into Excel.

 

[brokrken]

I had a thread similar to this a few months ago here:


http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/who-to-use-fidelity-schwab-vanguard-93550.html


In the end, I went with Schwab and have found their trading tools to be great.

 

[OldShooter]

... only a small portion of portfolio will be involved ... < 5%. ...

Nothing wrong buying chips with some fun money and putting them on the table. With casinos, you have to drive. In the market you don't.

If I were doing this I would open an account at a different brokerage from my main portfolio. This will reduce the temptation to transfer serious money to the play money account as it (probably) diminishes. But, hey, maybe you'll get lucky!

TDAmeritrade web trading system has a pretty good reputation with traders I think. (Story already told here, but a good one: I was talking to a TD branch manager last year and I asked her what the national average gain of their retail traders was in 2016. She hesitated and then said: "1 1/2%" In 2016 the market was up roughly 10-25% depending on the sector.)