Internet Share Trading - Share Dealing Online

Looking for an Internet share trading account? Here’s all you need to know about share trading online. Whether you’re a novice or a semi-professional day trader, there’s an online share trading account for you.

Some share trading accounts allow you to only trade in stock market traded stocks such as shares, ETFs, bonds, investment trusts, REITs and other financial investments. By contrast many smaller investors are interested in dealing in both stocks as well as mutual funds and unit trusts.

If you are intending to invest in both stocks and funds then it’s possible to find an internet share trading account that allows you to trade both stocks and funds. For UK investors there are a wide range of internet based share dealing accounts from a wide range of brokers. The discount brokers/fund supermarket providers are especially popular.

Hargreaves Lansdown is a particularly popular UK based discount broker. Its ISA, SIPP Pension and standard share dealing accounts allow private investors to buy and sell a wide range of investments, including both stocks and unit trusts. Unfortunately there is usually a compromise when selecting a share trading provider. In the case of Hargreaves Lansdown there is a sliding scale of transaction fees whenever you buy or sell a stock. This isn’t as good as other providers such as iii, who have a fixed trading fee regardless of the transaction’s value. However, larger dealing costs are offset by the fact that Hargreaves Lansdown provide very substantial discounts to the initial fee charged by the majority of unit trusts. There are also no charges to hold a unit trust (beyond the usual fund manager annual charge).

Some UK based investors prefer share dealing accounts that can be opened as a stocks & shares ISA or a SIPP Personal Pension. These are more tax efficient, particularly if the investor makes some good capital gains profits from share dealing.

For investors intending to do a lot of share dealing in equity markets it’s often a better choice to open a dedicated share trading account. In the UK companies such as iii offer low cost share dealing. iii's standard share dealing account has amongst the lowest dealing charges. It also has a good range of more advanced trading opportunities such as the ability to set stop losses and limit orders.

For US and Australian private investors a popular financial services provider is E*Trade. E*Trade offers its customers a range of sophisticated charting options as well as real time stock prices. There are also a wide range of stock screening tools to automatically identify promising trades. E*Trade also offers some very sophisticated features such as the ability to lock in profits from your trades as well as trailing stops.

The Motley Fool also provides a wide range of share trading services – there are both US and UK versions of the Fool’s website.

For serious professional investors, there are a range of specialist share trading accounts that offer a much more comprehensive range of features.

Although sites such as iii provide basic stock charting tools and a few of the more advanced features such as stop losses and basic automated trading, there are more powerful alternatives available for day traders.

Many professional day traders like to trade via spread betting or CFD’s. Most Internet stockbrokers offer some kind of spread betting or CFD trading service. These services are often provided by third party companies, so consequently they’re not always fully integrated with the rest of the provider’s website.

For those professional day traders who like to deal directly in stocks, ETFs, commodities, bonds, futures and options and foreign currency (forex), there are a range of day trading software options. Many companies such as TradeStation provide their clients with sophisticated trading software tools that go way beyond the basic stock chart analysis provided by online stock trading sites such as iii or finance information sites such as Google or Yahoo finance.

So whether you’re a novice trader who wants to trade in stocks occasionally, or a day trading power user, there are a wide range of internet share trading sites available.

The author of this article is not authorised to give financial advice. This article is for information only does not constitute financial advice. Before making investment or retirement decisions consult an independent financial adviser.