| Discount stock brokers are the most common type | | | | somebody who does this for you. This is where the |
| of brokers but there are other brokers like full | | | | full service broker comes into play. He offers personal |
| service brokers and money managers. | | | | service and attention, takes care of your financial |
| Just about thirty years ago there were only full | | | | planning, gives you investment advice, discusses all |
| service stock brokers, offering order execution and | | | | trading decisions with you and executes the trades |
| investment advice at extremely high costs. Then the | | | | for you. All these at a higher price of course. |
| first discount brokers came in with low fees just for | | | | If you don't even want to bother which stocks to |
| trade execution. They gained market share pretty | | | | buy and why, then the money manager is your |
| quickly because many investors were making their | | | | choice. He makes all the decisions for you and just |
| own investment decisions and were just looking for | | | | reports to you what has happened. |
| cheap order execution at the stock exchange. | | | | The online discount brokers can also be divided into |
| The trend continued with the help of the computer | | | | three groups. The first one is the classic discount |
| technology and the invention if the Internet. Today | | | | broker which offers extremely cheap order |
| online discount brokers are huge companies in a multi | | | | execution through a simple and easy to use software |
| billion dollar industry. Order execution by phone got | | | | platform. The second type of discount broker offers |
| rare. Now self-educated investors and traders get | | | | additional services upon request, for instance phone |
| highly sophisticated trading platforms from their stock | | | | orders at extra costs or access to research |
| brokers at no additional costs. | | | | information. |
| These software trading platforms offer everything | | | | The third type of online discount broker targets |
| from instant order execution at all US stock | | | | professional private or institutional traders who need |
| exchanges to real time quotes, news and charts. | | | | advanced order execution and direct access to |
| Even advanced technical analysis is available today at | | | | different markets and order routing ways. They give |
| minimal costs. Transaction costs came down so much | | | | you the option to choose between dozens of order |
| that they are not really an issue anymore. Only day | | | | routing ways and order types to improve the order |
| traders who do sometimes up to several hundred | | | | execution speed or quantity. |
| trades a day have to watch their trading costs. | | | | No matter what broker you want to use, he should |
| The full service broker is still an option for many. If | | | | be member of the SIPC in the case the discount |
| you don't have the time to watch quotes and read | | | | stock broker gets into financial problems. Then your |
| the news all time then you may want to have | | | | account is insured up to $500,000. |