The Sites You (We) need to Trade
A long long time ago during the twentieth century, our trading Ancestors (at least those who claimed to be serious Markets players) needed costly equipment and infrastructures in large trading rooms, that included expensive terminals and softwares, satellite connections for real-time, recorded phones and dealer boards. In order to enter into a transaction, they needed to call their brokers, hoping for a fair and skilled execution. The news and information were found in printed newspapers that were distributed every morning on the trading desks.
The Internet has changed all these. Now anyone can compete, in terms of execution, research, information, services and news flows with the professionals from the best Investment Houses at extremely low costs as they have dramatically decreased thanks to the competition between the providers. More simply said : everything you need to trade is available on the Web. Now the thing is to know what you need, where to find it and which one to choose among the endless list of providers.
Fortunately, we are here to help! This page lists the websites We, at the Lord of Trading, do need to trade and assume that You will also need to trade...
Of course, our number 1 recommendation is this website, as one of our purpose is precisely to provide the traders with all what their daily trading requires in one single website. We will update this page on the regular basis based on the actual experience, recommendations and reviews of our Fellow Traders.
News and Research
For the News flow, just follow the leading business publications and the market references. Our advise is to subscribe to the RSS feeds provided by the major sites and aggregate them in a RSS reader. There is a lag in the feeds but, unless you trade the news or a scalper, it should be OK.
- Bloomberg, Reuters and Dow Jones Newswire are the market references thanks to their professional terminals that have been feeding the trading rooms worlwide for decades.
- The Wall Street Journal is one of the most respected source for news and business information worldwide. We strongly recommend a subscription to The Wall Street Journal Online
- In the UK, the Financial Times reigns supreme. Go and have a look at FT Alphaville blogs and for the Financial professionals its Long Room, some of our Senior Members, including Sauros, post there as well.
- For independent investment research and opinion, Morningstar is one of the top 25 searched sites for financial news and information (Nielsen, September 2008), as well as the recognized leader in stock and mutual fund analysis. In fact, they have more than 6,000,000 registered members (just a few more than us!). The US residents should definitely register to a Morningstar Free Membership or to a Morningstar Premium Membership (14-day free trial)
Forex Brokers
- Our recommended Forex broker is OANDA FXTrade : Online currency trading with tight spreads, no minimum deposit or transaction size, and no service charge. They offer the lowest spreads (less than 1 pip for EURUSD). To be noticed : their News tool, accessible from the platform (including the practice version) is one of the best we found (after Bloomberg Professional and Reuters Kobra, but that's free!) and FXGlobalTransfer which allows to exchange funds in 24 currencies for a fixed tiny fee at (almost) the spot level and this for any amount.
- We recently partnered with AVAFX a brand new online Forex broker. We are still currently reviewing their services and will keep you updated. No problem so far and their trading platform is quite good, it's promising! Their "auto-trading" services are interesting and definitely need to be investigated further!
Stocks, Options and Futures
For Stocks, Options and Futures trading, we strongly recommend optionsXpress a reference in online brokerage in the US which is now growing internationally. Their site proposes free Webinars on options strategies that are as well highly recommended, research, futures whitepapers, practice accounts and trading tools.
OptionsHouse, LLC, is an online stock and option broker delivering a streamlined trading experience on its professional-grade trading platform, accessible at optionhouse.com, a subsidiary of proprietary option-trading firm, PEAK6 Investments, established in 1997 and located on the original Chicago Board of Trade trading floor
. OptionsHouse's offers a unique flat-rate commission structure to its customers and was built by traders for traders.
In Barron's 2009 survey of Online Brokers, OptionsHouse was ranked number one for trade experience and named "Best for Options Traders".
Spread betting and CFD
For Financial Spread Betting and CFD, our choice is CMC Markets we have found reliable so far and with good platforms (both standard and mobile) and broad markets.
For the spread betting n the UK (where it's tax free !), we recommend ODL Markets which proposes a minimum stake as low as 50p for their "limited risk" account that allows to understand the mechanisms of spread betting with a limited capital and control its high leverage. Their platform is very basic but you can use for the charts an ODL CFD practice account on Metatrader4.
Live Quotes and Charts
We have selected ADVFN
a large stocks and shares website, offering the private investor free streaming prices from NASDAQ, NYSE, Dow Jones and many more indices from around the world. Just register there for free.
Make money with your Practice Account !
Most of the online brokers propose free practice accounts duplicating their live platforms. A few sites that includes real-time platforms, community services and educational materials organize free contests and you can earn money while learning to trade or testing your new strategies if you have a good performance. That's merely infinite leverage to us !
- For the stock pickers and Alpha seekers, Updown.com offers a real-time stock trading game and proposes you on a monthly basis to earn real money for beating The S&P
- For the Forex, eToro
proposes an innovative visual platform. Their race between the Cowboy and the Sumo for instance when you trade the USDJPY is absolutely fun! They propose monthly championships with $10,000 rewards.