Ameritrade vs eTrade vs Scotttrade.

I'm sure this topic has been beaten to death, but I searched and only found a little bit of information.

I'll be playing with $2500 dollars and I will do very few trades. Probably buy into 1 or 2 stocks and let it sit for awhile.

So with that in mind, which online trading company would be best for me?

 

What stocks did you have in mind?

With 2500 I'd put it into a good no-load mutual fund, probably an index fund of some type.

 

AMD... and wait it out. They're really low right now, but i expect them to bounce back in the future

What are no load mutual funds?

 

if you've got 2500 for sure go with zecco... if you have that much in your acct you get 10 free trades each month. i get $50 for each referral so if i refer you i'll kick back half/$25 your way if you want.

can't go wrong with scottrade though either that's who i had before zecco.

and for that little i'd either go with CGMFX if you still want some risk. its a mutual fund but ken heebner is a smart guy

if you want stocks, don't go with AMD. they are getting killed by INTC. plenty of other places to put your money into. i'd actually put 500 into 5 stocks if i was you. take your pick to ensure you're diversified.

POT - agriculture (fertilizer pricing power)
RIG - deepwater drilling
CHK - natural gas
AAPL or QCOM - tech
GILD - biosci
SDS - ultrashort the indexes (for hedging)
MA - 'financial'. not really a financial at all, purely a payment processor
ETR - nuclear/electricity
RSX - russian index fund
FLR - infrastructure

i could list more but the main thing for you is diversification. depends on how risky you want to be with this money really. you're young after all but for all i know you could really need this cash?

the 'easy' thing to do would be to just buy an index fund and call it good but i'm sorry i cant recommend that to people in this environment. due for a short term recovery but after that i think its back down we go again.

 

He said do 1 or 2 trades and let it sit so really any brokerage would be fine