E-Trade is arguably the most popular and well known online discount stock brokerages. Boasting over 4000 employees and having a net income over 600 million dollars per year (2006), E-Trade clearly is sitting high on the list of top online brokerages. I personally use E-Trade for all of my investment needs and do recommend it to anyone who is considering opening an account with an online stock broker. Here is how it E-Trade ranks among their competition:

Have you ever played a game of poker with just chips and no money on the line? In those games players bluff, they call hands they know they have no chance at winning, and will ultimately play in a manner that displays one huge underlining problem: they don’t care because it’s not real money. Well, that’s paper trading in a nut shell.

Every investor needs a self created list of rules to invest by so that they stay disciplined and successful. Many investors learn the hard way what the do’s and don’t’s of the stock market are, but fail to write them down so that they don’t repeat these mistakes over the course of their investing career. You need to make a list of rules to invest by yourself, and this article will show you how to do that.

Every investor has their own strategies, methods, and techniques to achieving success. Though despite these differences, all successful investors share the same distinct traits which truly separate them from the herd. The five traits of a successful investor are:

The Stock Market is a significant entity of our society that seems to have too much ignorance surrounding it by the non-investing individuals. The intention of this mini-series entitled “Introduction to the Stock Market” is to enlighten the average individual with no background or knowledge in the investing world.

Most people would argue that you’re either an investor or a trader. However I would argue that an investor can possess characteristics of a trader while still maintaining the core attributes of an investor. The definition of an investor or trader shouldn’t be relative to a time period. If you invest in a stock for only a few days, this shouldn’t mean you are automatically a trader.

It is important when viewing this article to keep in mind that no one can truly know if and when a stock market correction or crash will occur. However, it is entirely possible to spot the signs of a coming correction or crash, and this article will show you how to assess the current market to help you decide whether you should stay in the market, short the market, or stay out of the market.

The investing industry is one that is plagued with a history of deceit. Forunately for the average investor, the Securities and Exchange Commission is there to protect us from these deceitful companies. Public companies that you can invest in are required to report important documents of information to the SEC so that this information is public and there is transparency in the market. Without this requirement, public companies could claim they have high revenues when they don’t, and anyone invested in that deceitful company would find their stock worth nothing when it became known that the company is just a shell, producing little to no revenue. If this sounds scary to you, then this is exactly what you’re getting when you invest in penny stocks!

Investing in the stock market is a scary thing for new investors. It is even scarier for anyone who is doing it alone. I know, I started out with an online brokerage account with under a thousand dollars in the account. When you first start out, it is very important to not invest any significant amounts of money. Think of it as play money, or rather, money you could afford to lose. It should not be money you need to sustain your standard of living. There are some basic fundamentals that I’ve learned the hard way through my mistakes in the stock market. This article will teach you the fundamentals of successful investing so that you don’t make the same mistakes that I did!