I ended up going on a bit of rant with yesterdays post about buying BP stock so I’ll try and get back on track today. Trading options. What options do you have available to you and what’s the best road to go down. Firstly, everything is done online these days. You could your phone if you want but it’s been a while since I’ve touched mine. I sit here with my portfolio on screen and can operate everything I need to from here. I’m usually got Google Finance open too just to keep track of the news. Google Finance is a tremendous resource. I used to rave about how great Yahoo Finance was but I guess since my mail and calendar is tied up with Google they kind of suckered me in. It’s a great place to get the latest news of the day in the business world and find out how much stocks are doing.

So I’d imagine you’ve got yourself a broker right? There are lots of them online. My advice on finding one is to stick to some of the well known companies and then look to see how much commission they charge. Yes that’s right, they charge you for buying stocks…with uh…your money? Keep this in mind when you’re purchasing stocks. There’s not much point in buying one share of a company which costs you $1 and then you have to pay $10 for brokers fees. I try and keep my buys and sells as infrequent as possible. If you’re into penny stocks that’s a whole different area which I might go into. For the purpose of this, get yourself a good broker and then you’ll at least have a few trading options. You can buy stock based on the stock ticker symbol. There’s usually a search function so don’t worry if you can’t remember the unique code. One other thing to remember is if you decide to buy stocks in another country. Most of the online brokers will allow you to buy stocks in other markets like Asia or Europe. If you do this you may have to fill in additional paperwork since the Tax laws might be different. This might be one scenario where you have to pick up your phone and chat to the broker. It’s much easier to do that than to try and find the answer in some silly FAQ section.

I’m sure you’re aware there are lots of mutual funds out there too you don’t just have to buy individual stocks and shares? This is for a whole other post too as there’s so much content for that one. Mutual funds can be your friend they’re just not as sexy as buying shares yourself. You won’t hear many people talking about how they invested $100 in this or that mutual fund. It’s much more interesting to talk about owning stocks in a company and how your own portfolio which you manage is doing. At the end of the day, we’re all trying to make money with this right? What’s sexiness got to do with that. Anyway, mutual funds are another trading option you have. You could even combine the two which I have done quite successfully over the years. Mutual funds usually take a management fee too so make sure you take this into account when you decide which one to go for. I find the best way to deal with them is to have a monthly amount go straight in to buying units in the mutual fund. I’m a big fan all index tracker funds which basically buy up the whole market. Warren Buffett has previously touted them as being a safe trading option in the stock market. I’m not sure if there is such a thing but if the great man himself said it who am I to argue? So in short, the main trading options that I’ll be covering at least will be individual stocks and shares and then I’ll go into mutual funds with a specific emphasis on all index trackers. I won’t tell you which ones to buy but I will give you the tools to identify the right sort of investments where you should make a little money on the stock market.