How to choose the best investment platform for mutual funds?
1.Know Your Need
You can prioritise features like basic educational resources, extensive glossary, easy access to support staff, and the ability to make practice trades before you start playing with real money.
If you already have some investing experience, you can find more high-level education and opinion-based resources created by professional investors and analysts, as well as a good selection of fundamentals and technicals.
Are You an Active or Passive Investor?
Do you want to be super hands on or instead, do you want to find a few solid investors for the long haul with day-to-day interaction?
What Kind of Help Do You Want?
Learn how to interpret charts and financial data to find and execute your own trades, or whether you choose to hire a professional or do it yourself, what kind of resources you’ll need to advance your knowledge. Whether you need easy access to support staff, you are able to learn what you need to know through online educational resources.
What Are Your Investing Goals?
Do you want to finally become your primary source of income? Are you trying to increase retirement savings and if so, do you already have a retirement account or would you like to open a new one with your chosen brokerage?
Be honest with yourself about how much time, energy and effort you are willing and able to put into your investment. Your answers may change over time. Don’t try to anticipate your needs and goals for the rest of your life. Start where you are now.
2.Narrow the Field
Now that you have a clear idea of what your investment goals are and what basic services you’ll be looking for at your ideal brokerage, it’s time to narrow down your options. While there are some brokerage features that will be more important to some investors than others, there are some things that any reputable online brokerage should have. With such a wide range of options available, checking these basic requirements is a great way to quickly narrow down the field.
3.Figure Out the Fees
You should start with a clear idea of how much you will pay to use a particular brokerage when there may be other things that are more important to you.
As such for some, a small premium may be justified if the platform offers features that its competitors do not.
You can easily determine which stock brokers are too expensive to consider and not compatible with the investment activity you are focusing on.
4.Test the Broker’s Platform
While any brokerage should have a very good description of what kind of tools and resources their trading platform offers, sometimes the best way to assess platform quality is to give it a test drive. Brokers that allow you to open an account for free may also be worth the effort of going through the signup process just to access the trading platform if necessary.
Whether the brokerage has a web-based platform or a free downloadable platform that requires no-strings signup, do what you can to access the tools you actually use for free.
5.How well do stockbrokers educate clients?
While a useful trading platform is crucial, you should also take the time to use the brokerage’s educational opportunities and try out the search function.
If you are a new investor, you need to be able to find out what you don’t know. If there’s a topic you’ve been thinking about, do a trial run using the search function and see if you can find the information you need quickly and efficiently. Can it?
Remember that what is intuitive and user-friendly to one investor may be a terrible path of fruitless search queries to another, so it’s important to find a platform that you can work with.
6.Ease of Depositing and Withdrawing Funds
If you’re investing to supplement your regular income, it’s important to know how easy it is to move money into your brokerage account. If you want to use a more set-it-and-forget-it strategy, being able to withdraw funds is not a concern.
7.Customer Service
If you are a new investor, make sure you can get in touch with the service staff quickly and easily. Make sure the tech support team is easy to contact if you have a technical challenge
8.Get Going and Next Steps
Whether you’re looking to make trading a long-term hobby or simply a means to bulk up your retirement funds, you use the tools and resources that will set you up for a successful and enjoyable experience.
By following this guide, you’ll hopefully find the platform that best meets your needs, whatever they may be. You can find help sorting through the various brokers on our stock broker review page.
