Best Brokerage account for Student with 10,000

[mbeach]

Hello,

I am a student with 10,000. I just registered for an Interactive Brokers account but they will only let me have a cash account (no margin) because I have a low income.

When I was with thinkorswim I had access to margin but the problem was that I felt the $10 per stock trade was way too high given the fact that I was making $10,000 day trades.

What I was wondering was if there were any good platforms out there that would charge me no more than $3-5 per trade. I figure if I used margin then $3-5 would be an okay range.

By the way, with $10,000 am I usually allowed to use $10,000 extra margin or is it $20,000 (for a total of $30,000 of stock)?

Thank you for your help. I will eager await your replies.

 

[D.Gilberto]

I hope that $10k is backed with a wealth of knowledge and experience first.... (just a friendly question...)

If not, please don't allow yourself to become another statistic, contributing toward the figure of "90% of new retail traders fail" before becoming well educated and experienced first with a sound trading system...

 

[rsh01]

I hope that $10k is backed with a wealth of knowledge and experience first.... (just a friendly question...)

I guess you didn't read this bit....

"given the fact that I was making $10,000 day trades"

But then again he did ask if any....

"good platforms out there that would charge me no more than $3-5 per trade"

...DG, this shld confirm your fears. He's had 2 brokerage accounts yet its the platform which charges per trade, and I thought it was the broker.

I assume the 'I am a student' bit was to just **** off 99.99% of other students. Call me cynical but, jeez.

 

[mbeach]

As far as results go I am profitable over hundreds of trades the last couple years, paper trading several strategies I've developed using technical analysis and stock screening.

I came here for advice - so if no one has any then I'm happy to move on.

I was attracted to interactive brokers because their commissions are lower for people like me who don't make very large trades and I've already done the math on how commissions can eat up your profits (especially with the kind of trading I'm doing which averages .5%-.7% gain/loss). The 3-5 dollar figure comes from the assumption that I would be able to use margin to buy enough stocks to make that commission worth it for me. I don't really like the idea of flat fee commissions in general but I can make it work with enough volume.

So if anyone has any advice let me know, otherwise I suggest you focus on increasing your own ROI rather than ripping on other traders posting questions in forums.

 

[rsh01]

paper trading several strategies

I was making $10,000 day trades

so this was paper trading? nevermind.

so you just want to trade stocks? OptionsXpress have lower margins than IB on a lot of products, but higher commissions, not sure re stocks. though they have delayed quoted prices. IB have fixed & variable fees (for higher vols), which i think you alluded to.

most brokers will do deals depending on your volume / loyalty. those sort of questions wld be best asked to their cust service reps.

elitetrader forum may be worth looking at for further research, its stocks heavy.

 

[apau]

If you only want to trade stocks and want low margins, have you thought about spreadbetting. I too urge you to be careful, £10k is not a lot to trade with and especially if you have mostly only paper traded.Trading is an emotional game and once you do it for real it is very different to paper trading.

 

[forever_young]

Can't say anything about stocks, but you can try ECN account. It's about $3-5 commission per lot. You can find the best price, and margin is enough to trade well. Just find your broker. (of course it's a different thing from paper trading, I'm sure you understand it).

 

[D.Gilberto]

I guess you didn't read this bit....

"given the fact that I was making $10,000 day trades"

But then again he did ask if any....

"good platforms out there that would charge me no more than $3-5 per trade"

...DG, this shld confirm your fears. He's had 2 brokerage accounts yet its the platform which charges per trade, and I thought it was the broker.

I assume the 'I am a student' bit was to just **** off 99.99% of other students. Call me cynical but, jeez.

lol calm down. If you re-read his first post, it appeared to me this guy could be fairly new to trading (hence the questions)

Stop competing and being so aggressive in his defense... Do you even know him? I didn't mean any offence to him and was merely suggesting from my perspective the right direction for someone who sounded like they`re fairly new from the first post and the way it was written....

Apologize if I am wrong in saying this....