A reader of my book named Katherine sent me the following email over the weekend. She asks a question I’m sure many other traders have in mind?
I found the FXTrade platform very user friendly for your examples in the book. But I purchased this book to learn how to trade stocks. I’ve looked at several stock broker platforms, but none of them seem as easy to get a handle on. You say your techniques work just as well for stocks as they do for forex, so why not explain the ins and outs of a viable stock platform as well?
I’ve looked at eTrade and Interactive Brokers, both of which are highly rated (albeit on different merits). The tutorials and demo platforms don’t really explain anything. And finding the tools that relate well to the FXTrade platform is difficult for someone who has never traded outside of mutual funds before.
And, after reading your book, I’m now also interested in forex. What online platform has the best integration for both stock and forex trading? Short of opening an account and poking around with it for hours on end, how does one go about figuring out the best platform to use?
I wasn’t planning on opening more than one account.
To answer the question why I didn’t run through examples in the book using a stock platform, it’s quite simple. One reason is the book would have had to have been lengthened considerably. More important, though (and specifically mentioned in the text), forex is the market which is active and tradable 24 hours per day, meaning one can practice with it at whatever time of day fits one’s schedule. That’s why I picked it as the teaching focus for the classroom work I have done, and that’s why I opted for it in the book.
As for specific platforms…
Firstly, my own personal stock trading platform experience encompasses just two. My first ever stock brokerage account was with Charles Schwab. I still have that account today and have always been quite happy with their service and their trading platform options. The other platform I have used – though I didn’t use it main for stocks – is Interactive Brokers (IB). With Schwab you are constrained to trading the equity markets (though in all their forms – mutual funds, stocks, ETFs, etc. - plus bonds and the like. No forex and no futures. With IB it’s the full universe of alternatives (stocks, forex, futures) all from a single account, which is definitely convenient.
That said, however, while Schwab actually has a nice platform with charting and screening and all that stuff, IB’s platform is basically only price and execution. There are charting packages and other utilities which can take the data feed from IB and use it for chart plotting and all that. I’m no expert, though. I only used IB for a few months from a business perspective at one point a few years ago.
Unfortunately, I can’t provide much more specific help than that. I’m not going to recommend platforms I have no experience with because that would be irresponsible of me. I will say, though, that I have friends and colleagues who are happy with the E-Trade and Think or Swim platforms. My suggestion for anyone researching brokers – in any market – is to check out what users have posted on sites like Trade2Win, and of course to open demo accounts to see which ones suit your specific needs.
If you have experience with any brokers – good or bad- please contribute your own thoughts on the subject.
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About the Author
John Forman, author of this blog, has traded for more than 20 years, is a professional market analyst, and authored The Essentials of Trading. He is an active participant in trading forums, consults for trading related businesses, as published literally dozens of trading articles, and has been quoted in a number of books and in the media.
** See John’s full bio.
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