I'm in Australia.  What should I look for in an online stock broker, for trading mostly on the ASX?
It depends what you want to do with them.  If you are just simply going to drip-feed into pre-identified shares or ETFs every few months at the market price, you don't need fancy features: just go with whoever is cheaper.   You can always open another account later if you need something more exotic. Some brokerages are associated with banks and that may give you a benefit if you already deal with that bank: faster transfers (anz-etrade), or zero brokerage (westpac brokerage on westpac structured products.) There's normally no account fee so you can shop around. If you want the cheapest online broker in Australia, you can't go past CMC Markets, they charge $9.90 upto a $10,000 trade and 0.1% above that. There is no ongoing fees unless you choose to have dynamic data (stock prices get updated automatically as they change). However, the dynamic data fee does get waived if you have about 10 or more trades per month. You don't really need the dynamic data unless you are a regular trader anyway. They also provide some good research tools and some basic charting. Your funds with them are kept segragated in a Bankwest Account, so are resonably safe. They don't provide the best interest on funds kept in the account, so it is best to just deposit the funds when you are looking to buy, and move your funds elswhere (earning higher interest) when selling. Hopes this helps, regards Victor. Update They have now increased their basic brokerage to a minimum of $11 per trade unless you are a frequent trader. I don't know where your trade figures are from. ETrade, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, etc all have trading costs under 10 USD per share, so I'm not sure where your costs are coming from. I doubt currency conversion or anything like that will double the cost. As for your question, the answer is: It depends How much trading will you do? In what types of investments? For example, Schwab charges no commission on ETF purchases, but this is not an advantage if you wont buy ETFs. Consider minimums. Different brokers have different minimum cash balance/deposit requirements, so make sure you can meet those. It's true that you can get real time quotes anywhere, but consider the other services. For example, TD Ameritrade pools research reports for many publicly traded companies which are nice to read about what analysts have to say. Different brokers given different research tools, so read about offerings and see what's most useful to you. You can open different brokerage accounts, but it's much more convenient to have a one-stop place where you can do all you trading. Pick a broker which is low cost and offers a variety of investments as well as good customer support and a straightforward system. "OptionsXpress is good. I have used them for many years to trade stocks mainly (writing Covered calls and trading volatility). You set the account up through OptionsXpress Australia, and then fund the account from one of your accounts in Australia (I just use my Bank of Queensland account). The currency conversion will be something to watch (AUD to USD). The rates are low, but one of the best features is ""virtual trading"". It allows you to give yourself virtual funds to practice. You can then experiment with stop-losses and all other features. Perhaps other platforms have this, but I am yet to see it... anyway, if you want to trade in US stocks you are going to need to switch to USD anyway. ASX never moves enough for my interests. Regards, SB"
"Good question! It seems to me that there is no minimum order size for shares trading on the LSE. Please note, I couldn't find an definite answer, but: According to the ""International Order Book"" document (see: http://www.londonstockexchange.com/traders-and-brokers/rules-regulations/change-and-updates/stock-exchange-notices/2010/n2210_attach1.pdf) from the LSE (page 7): Question 7: Would respondents support a revision of the minimum order    size of 50 units?   Whilst there was   limited support for a low value based   minimum order size the  majority of   respondents requested its complete   removal.  This was  incorporated into   the September 2010 quarterly review as   per Service  Announcement 001/100910   and as from 20 September 2010, the   minimum  order size in all IOB   securities has been 1 unit Even though not all trading on the LSE is performed on this IOB system, it would be very wierd if the international stocks can be traded in any size, while domestic stocks will have an minimum size. Further, consider looking to the times and sales of various stocks (here you can find an example http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/prices-and-markets/stocks/exchange-insight/trade-data.html?page=0&fourWayKey=GB0006731235GBGBXSET1&formName=frmRow&upToRow=-1). Those trades also suggest that there is no minimum order size (for example, I just saw an executed trade with an size of 13). At last, look at the Interactive Brokers (no relationship with) Exchange List at http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/exchanges.php?exch=lse&showcategories=&ib_entity=llc. Here you can click on various stock names, and in the popup window that opens, look for 'size parameters' and the size increment. I could only find stocks with an size increment of 1 (i.e. you can trade anything with a minimum of 1 stock, and more needs to be in steps of 1 stock). Even though I couldn't find official information on the LSE site (like a leaflet for beginners or such), it does seem to me that you can trade any size you want on LSE.  Please note that mutual funds and illiquid OTC stocks which don't have an continuous market can have different rules, so double-check with your broker." There are 2 main types of brokers, full service and online (or discount). Basically the full service can provide you with advice in the form of recommendations on what to buy and sell and when, you call them up when you want to put an order in and the commissions are usually higher. Whilst an online broker usually doesn't provide advice (unless you ask for it at a specified fee), you place your orders online through the brokers website or trading platform and the commissions are usually much lower. The best thing to do when starting off is to go to your country's stock exchange, for example, The ASX in Sydney Australia, and they should have a list of available brokers. Some of the online brokers may have a practice or simulation account you can practice on, and they usually provide good educational material to help you get started. If you went with an online broker and wanted to buy Facebook on the secondary market (that is on the stock exchange after the IPO closes), you would log onto your brokers website or platform and go to the orders section. You would place a new order to buy say 100 Facebook shares at a certain price. You can use a market order, meaning the order will be immediately executed at the current market price and you will own the shares, or a limit price order where you select a price below the current market price and wait for the price to come down and hit your limit price before your order is executed and you get your shares. There are other types of orders available with different brokers which you will learn about when you log onto their website. You also need to be careful that you have the funds available to pay for the share at settlement, which is 3 business days after your order was executed. Some brokers may require you to have the funds deposited into an account which is linked to your trading account with them. To sell your shares you do the same thing, except this time you choose a sell order instead of a buy order. It becomes quite simple once you have done it a couple of times. The best thing is to do some research and get started. Good Luck. "Before the prevalence of electronic trading, trading stocks was very costly, dropping from ~15c in the late 1970s to less than a nickel per share today.  Exchange fees for liquidity takers are ~0.3c per share, currently. When orders were negotiated exclusively by humans, stocks used to be quoted in fractions rather than decimal, such as $50 1/2 instead of something more precise like $50.02. That necessary ease of negotiation for humans to rapidly trade extended to trade size as well.  Traders preferred to handle orders in ""round lots"", 100 shares, for ease of calculation of the total cost of the trade, so 100 shares at $50 1/2 would have a total cost of $5,050.  The time for a human to calculate an ""odd lot"" of 72 shares at $50.02 would take much longer so would cost more per share, and these costs were passed on to the client. These issues have been negated by electronic trading and simply no longer exist except for obsolete brokerages.  There are cost advantages for extremely large trades, well above 100 shares per trade. Brokerage fees today run the gamut: they can be as insignificant as what Interactive Brokers charges to as high as a full service broker that could charge hundreds of USD for a few thousand USD trade.  With full service brokerages, the charges are frequently mystifying and quoted at the time a trade is requested.  With discount brokerages, there is usually a fee per trade and a fee per share or contract.  Interactive Brokers will charge a fee per share or option only and will even refund parts of the liquidity rebates exchanges provide, as close as possible to having a seat on an exchange.  Even if a trader does not meet Interactive Brokers' minimum trading requirement, the monthly fee is so low that it is possible that a buy and hold investor could benefit from the de minimis trade fees. It should be noted that liquidity providing hidden orders are typically not rebated but are at least discounted. The core costs of all trades are the exchange fees which are per share or contract.  Over the long run, costs charged by brokers will be in excess of charges by exchanges, and Interactive Brokers' fee schedule shows that it can be reduced to a simple markup over exchange fees.   Exchanges sometimes have a fee schedule with lower charges for larger trades, but these are out of reach of the average individual." You'd invest through NASDAQ OTC market--I use Vanguard and it allows me to invest through there; I'm sure other online brokers have it too. If you search the companies you'll see the listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ OTC. The prices will be different--just because it goes up in HK doesn't mean it goes up in NASDAQ. There are also a few listed in the US--SINA, Weibo Corp., JD.com.  From there, start looking at the major Chinese tech companies to see what they're worth. With InteractiveBrokers there is no minimum trade amount, they also offer Australian Equities. Absolutely.  It does highly depend on your country, as US brokerages are stricter with or even closed to residents of countries that produce drugs, launder money, finance terror, have traditional difficulty with the US, etc. It also depends on your country's laws.  Some countries have currency controls, restrictions on buying foreign/US securities, etc. That said, some brokerages have offices world-wide, so there might be one near you.  If your legal situation as described above is fortunate, some brokers will simply allow you to setup online using a procedure not too different from US residents: provide identification, sign tons of documents.  You'll have to have a method to deliver your documentation in the ways you'd expect: mail, fax, email. E*Trade is the best starter broker, right now, imo.  Just see how far you can go in the sign-up process. The key word you forgot to include from Slide 29 is: Free-Riding Investopedia defines free-riding as: In the context of a brokerage firm, a free rider problem refers to a situation where a client has been allowed to purchase shares without actually paying for them, and then subsequently sells the shares (ideally for profit). The problem with this scenario is that the client, if allowed to free ride, can profit from a stock trade without actually using any of his or her own capital. This is illegal. I have not heard of any issues with this type of action being a problem with trading accounts in Australia, nor have I been able to find any such rules on the ASX website or any of by brokers websites. So I think this may be an issue in the USA but not Australia. You should check the rules in any other countries you wish to trade in. "Take a look at FolioFN - they let you buy small numbers of shares and fractional shares too.  There is an annual fee on the order of US$100/year.  You can trade with no fees at two ""windows"" per day, or at any time for a $15 fee. You are better off leaving the stock in broker's name, especially if you live overseas.  Otherwise you will receive your dividends in the form of cheques that might be expensive to try to cash.  There is also usually a fee charged by the broker to obtain share certificates instead of shares in your account."