I trade with Merrill lynch and was told that I should get 30 free trades per month and I don't see that happening. Now when I first opened the account I did, but I don't think so any more . And i didn't realize that I had to have so much Equity to trade for pennies!!!
Always know what you sign, and always know what you are trading with. (this includes the limitations that come with them)
If you want to trade fee-free you might want to try RobinHood.com. The have no trading fee. They are new-ish but so obvious red flags so far. I use them for picking up small amounts of individual stocks, where using my normal Fidelity account would just kill any likely profit with fees. That said I am only into them for less than $1000 so far and if anyone can tell me a reason that their fee-free model is risky or just not going to work in the long term I would be very interested to hear about it. Essentially they use other income sources like interest on uninvested balances.
I am interested in RobinHood.com, do you just sign up and put some money into your account that you can use to buy and sell stocks? Can you do trading at any point or are there restrictions on how many trades you can do. What is the recommended starting amount for someone who is just getting started at trading? I so need to get more educated on all of this so I can be a successful day trader.
Yes, just signup, deposit, install app, trade. They are in private beta currently, so unless you get an invite from someone, you'll have to wait. There are no restrictions (aside what you'd normally have from other brokers). Robinhood doesn't have access to every single ticker from markets, so be aware there that you might not find your ticker.
I did not know it was by invitation, if anyone wants an invite just PM me with am email address and I will work out how to send one. I am using it to buy stocks in companies I use and am familiar with, I have yet to hit a case where they did not have that stock available. EDITED TO ADD: I just checked, they have been open to all comers since March http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/12/r...on-stock-trading-app-is-now-available-to-all/