While long-term savings accounts are an excellent way to save for the future, to build wealth you’ll need an investment account. For those new to investing, though, it can be intimidating to take the plunge and begin to put your money into the market. However, the growth of online brokerage accounts for beginners has sprouted over recent years and made it easier for newcomers to the investment world to stake their claim.
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5 Best Online Brokerage Accounts for Beginners
- E*TRADE: Caters to both beginners and experts.
- Fidelity: Focuses on long-term and retirement investing.
- Personal Capital: Offers a free investment analysis service.
- Robinhood: Provides low-cost trading that’s ideal for newcomers.
- Public: Takes a community-based approach to analysis and investing.
Best Online Brokerage Account for Beginners: Our Picks
E*TRADE – Useful For Beginners and Experts
E*TRADE has a long legacy of helping people of all experience levels invest in stocks, bonds, and funds. It offers helpful tools for beginners while also giving experienced investors everything they need to succeed.
Most beginners will likely stick to investing their money in stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). E*TRADE has no fees for these types of investments. Trades of options, futures, and mutual funds, which tend to be preferred by active investors, will require an additional, though nominal, charge.
As one of the original online brokerage platforms, E*TRADE has an intuitive interface. For those looking for additional research on investing or trading, the platform’s research section is also very competitive.
Fidelity – Low Fees With a Focus on Retirement
Fidelity is perhaps best known for its focus on long-term investments. It offers low fees and an easy-to-use platform that’s ideal for those new to investing.
You’ll be able to trade most of the popular investment types on Fidelity’s platform. In addition, it can handle international stocks and commodities. To help you with this wide range of trading options, Fidelity provides research and analysis that goes further in-depth than almost any other platform.
While many online brokerage accounts offer fee-free trades of stocks and ETFs, Fidelity goes further. It’s the first brokerage ever to offer mutual funds with no annual fund fees.
Personal Capital – Free Investment Analysis Service
While self-guided research into investing is great for some, others may prefer the help of professionals to ensure they’re making effective, responsible investment decisions. Personal Capital offers such a platform and deserves consideration as a potential best online brokerage account for beginners.
Personal Capital focuses on a personalized investment strategy. Furthermore, it utilizes real-life investment experts and advanced technology to build a portfolio that’s ideal for your unique needs. It also incorporates a socially responsible strategy that focuses on companies displaying positive stances on environmental, social, and governance issues.
With free investment analysis services, you’ll find yourself with a better understanding of your overall financial picture than you would with any other platform.
Robinhood – Ideal for Beginning Day Traders
Robinhood has drawn both positive and negative headlines over the past year or so. However, when you dig into the substance, it’s hard to ignore Robinhood’s net-positive contribution to helping newcomers to investing.
The platform advertises itself as democratizing investing. It does this by keeping its basic services free and even including a free stock when you first creating an account. However, you’ll still be able to set up alerts and notifications on preferred companies and investment opportunities. This gives you easy access to important information.
Robinhood was designed for beginners and gives you quick access to stock, ETF, option, and cryptocurrency trading.
Public – A Community-Based Approach to Investing
Public helps beginning investors by taking an approach similar to a social media company.
With Public, you can trade stocks and ETFs without having to pay a fee. You can also invest in fractional shares, which means you don’t need to invest thousands of dollars to purchase a single stock of major companies. Public’s app is intuitive and offers no difficulty when browsing available stocks.
When you sign up for a Public account, you can follow investors and other Public accounts so you have access to their thoughts and commentary. You’ll also be able to create group chats or join those already created so you can ask and answer investment-related questions.
Summary
To be deemed the best online brokerage account for beginners, a platform needs two key attributes: firstly an easy, low-cost way to invest and secondly intuitive research tools that make their customers better informed. Due to the lack of fees with these brokerage firms, it’s easy to spend time on several platforms then choose which one is best for your needs.
Quick Questions
Investment accounts are ideal for anyone looking to grow their wealth. Ideally, you should have long-term investments in place and limited debt before you begin engaging in short-term trading.
There are varying opinions on cryptocurrency’s usefulness as an investment. Robinhood is the only platform listed here that allows for cryptocurrency investing.
Investing is an essential component of your overall financial health. For more information on investing, saving, and finances keep reading MoneyMash!
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