How Online Trading Works

Before you can trade stocks online, you have to select an online broker. Your online broker will execute your trades and store your money and stock in an account. The online trading industry has seen lots of mergers and acquisitions, but there are still many firms to choose from. Different firms also offer different levels of help, account types and other services. Here are some things you should keep in mind as you look for a broker.

Some sites, such as Keynote and Smartmoney, rate online brokerages based on success rates, customer service response time, trading tools and other factors. They can help you make a decision as you shop around for the best trading site for your needs, but keep in mind that there are no official standards for ranking or evaluating brokerages.

As with any site that requires your personal and financial information, you should make sure your online broker has good security measures, including automatic logouts and transmission encryption. You should also make sure your brokerage is reputable. The Investing Online Resource Center has a good list of links you can use to make sure your firm is legitimate.

When you open an account with a United States online brokerage, you'll answer questions about your investment and financial history. These questions determine your suitability for the account you are requesting -- the brokerage cannot legally allow you access to investments that you cannot reasonably handle. You will also have to provide your address, telephone number, social security number and other personal information. This helps the brokerage track and report your investments according to tax regulations and the PATRIOT Act.

In addition to providing this information, you must make several choices when you create an account. With most brokerages, you can chose between individual and joint accounts, just like at a bank. You can also open custodial accounts for your children or retirement accounts, which are often tax-deferred. Unless you pay a penalty, you can usually retrieve earnings from a retirement account only when you retire.

Next, you must choose between a cash account and a margin account. You can think of a cash account as a straightforward checking account. If you want to buy something using your checking account, you have to have enough money in the account to pay for it. Using a cash account, you have to have enough money to pay for the stock you want.

A margin account, on the other hand, is more like a loan or a line of credit. In addition to the actual cash in the account, you can borrow money from the brokerage based on the equity of the stock you already own, using that stock as collateral. Then, you can buy additional stock. Your margin is the equity you build in your account.

According to the Federal Reserve Board, you must have at least 50 percent of the price of the stock you wish to purchase in your account. In other words, if you want to purchase $5,000 worth of stock, the value of the cash and stock in your account must be at least $2,500. You can borrow the other $2,500 from the brokerage.

Once you have made your purchase, you must keep enough equity in your account, also called your equity percentage, to cover at least 25 percent of the securities you have purchased. Here's how the brokerage determines this number:

If your equity percentage falls below the minimum, the broker has the right to issue an equity call. Typically, the brokerage will try to contact you, but the firm has the right to sell any and all of your assets to raise your equity percentage to the minimum. The brokerage is not obligated to contact you.

Margin accounts are definitely more complex than cash accounts, and buying on credit presents additional financial risks. If all of that sounds overwhelming, it's a good idea to stick with a cash account. If you'd like some more examples of how margin accounts work, check out the IORC's Investing Simulator Center.

Finally, you must decide how the brokerage will store your money between trades. Many brokerages offer interest-bearing accounts, so you continue to earn money even when you are not trading.

Once you have made all these choices, you must fund your account. You can make a deposit by check, make a wire transfer to the brokerage or transfer holdings from another brokerage.

When your account is open, you're ready to trade. We'll look at the trading process next.

Once you've opened and funded your account, you can buy and sell stocks. But before you do that, you want to get a real-time stock quote to confirm the current price of the stock. Your brokerage may provide real-time quotes as part of your service. Many free financial news sites offer delayed quotes, which are at least twenty minutes behind the market. If the market is moving quickly, a delayed quote can be substantially different from the real trading price.

Once you've gotten your quote and decided you want to make a trade, you can choose to place a market order or a limit order. A market order executes at the current market price of the stock. A limit order, however, executes at or better than a price you specify. If the price doesn't reach the limit you set, your trade will not go through.

Some brokerages offer additional options, often used to prevent high losses when a stock price is falling. These include:

You must also select whether your order stays active until the end of the day, until a specific date or until you cancel it. Some brokerages allow you to place "all or none" or "fill or kill" orders, which prevent a partial rather than complete exchange of the stocks you want to trade.

Contrary to many people's perceptions, making trades online is not instantaneous, even if you're placing a market order. It can take time to find a buyer or seller and to electronically process the trade. Also, even though you can access your account and place buy and sell orders twenty-four hours a day, your trades execute only when the markets are open. An exception is if your firm allows after-hours trading, which is riskier due to the reduced number of trades taking place.

With erratic prices, corporate scandals and "market corrections," you may think you already have enough to worry about when it comes to trading stocks. But there is one more important worry to add to the pile -- investment fraud.

Long before the days of online trading, a few unscrupulous brokers defrauded investors or absconded with their money. Fraudulent firms known as boiler rooms have also employed brokers to make unsolicited phone calls to investors, selling bogus or overvalued stock. People must evaluate their broker's ethics and judgment, and part of the broker's job is to protect investors from fraudulent stocks.

With online trading, though, people must research stocks on their own, deciding what to buy and sell without the help of a broker or an investment planner. Fraudsters have taken advantage of this, leading to several notable methods of defrauding investors. These include:

Fortunately, you can protect yourself from most of this by doing your own research. In addition to researching your brokerage, you should research any company you plan to invest in, including reading annual reports and financial statements. You should also check the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis & Retrieval (EDGAR) system, especially if you are going to participate in an IPO. EDGAR includes IPO information and periodic reports from companies in the United States and other countries. Filing information with EDGAR is required by law.

Also, it's always a good idea to remember that if a stock deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.