How to start investing? I only have about $500....

[sazc]

Anyone ever use like a Scottrade or TD Ameritrade type account?

I have a Scottrade account for my Roth IRA. It's fine. You can buy, sell, etc as you wish.

I'm loving my betterment account. Just got an email, $307 in dividends, reinvested for me.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Anyone ever use like a Scottrade or TD Ameritrade type account?

Typical online brokerages sell their order flow, meaning you never get traded at where the market actually is at that moment. You pay a little more when you buy, and you get a little less when you sell. The advertised commission price is a scam. You pay more; it's just not a commission they have to disclose. For a typical investor type, you're never going to notice much of a difference. But if you trade a lot, then it will add up.

Another reason to hate online brokers is that, buried in your customer agreement, is the term that they reserve the right to not execute your order in the event of "fast market conditions." If a stock is really screaming upward when you hit buy, they're not going to execute your buy order until it stops going up, same if you are trying to sell something that is tanking.

 

[ubercat]

BB of your online platform has a limit price can the online broker charge you more?

 

[Bible_Belt]

BB of your online platform has a limit price can the online broker charge you more?

They just don't trade your order until it is past your limit price in their favor. If you enter a BUY LMT @ 100 order through an online broker, and the low for the day for that stock is exactly $100, your order will not get traded. But as soon as the stock starts trading at a few cents below $100, say $99.95 or so, then your order to buy it for $100 will get executed. If that was 1000 shares, you just paid $50 more than you should have, but they tell you that you only paid the $6 or whatever scam price they advertise as a commission.

And that's why frequent traders use a broker like interactivebrokers. However, it's not worth it unless you trade a lot. IB is just an order entry platform. So you are responsible for purchasing your own data feed of stock prices and charting software, and that's not cheap.