Each of the best stock trading platforms provides the three most important advantages for novice traders. To begin, the website or app itself needs to be intuitive and well-suited for first-timers. The second step is to make a range of instructional resources available to fresh investors so that they may get off to a good start. And finally, thirdly, the finest systems give users access to high-quality research on the stock market.
As part of our 2022 Assessment, we have compiled a list of the 5 best stock trading platforms through a series of tests and ratings, emphasizing the characteristics that novice investors need. In addition to conducting in-depth evaluations of each training center, we investigated whether brokers provide distinctive features such as seminars, live workshops, videos, development tracking, paper trading (also known as virtual trading), and interactive training components such as quizzes.
Top 5 Trading Platforms
Fidelity Investments
Fidelity Investments offers all of the benefits that an investor might anticipate receiving from a full-service company, including the whole range of financial services, ranging from share trading to financial advising.
- Cryptocurrency: Fidelity does not yet provide regular investors with the ability to trade cryptocurrencies.
- Fractional Shares: Trading in fractional shares allows investors to purchase a portion of a share rather than the entire share outright. For a business that is now selling at $500 per share, investors can purchase 1/10th of a share for the price of $50. 2022 will see us continuing to recommend Fidelity as our go-to broker for trading fractional shares due to the company's painstakingly crafted order ticket and unwavering commitment to offering clients the most cost-effective executions.
- Other investments: Although futures trading, FX trading, and cryptocurrency trading are not provided, international trading lets consumers trade in 25 different countries and swap between 16 different currencies. In the realm of international trading, only Interactive Brokers, which was developed specifically for industry experts, provides a greater degree of worldwide access.
- Retirement Services: Fidelity Investments provides retirement services, including standard, Roth, and best brokerage accounts, as well as good information and resources for retirement planning. In addition, the broker does not charge any incidental fees for IRA accounts.
TD Ameritrade
Trading stocks and providing advice on retirement are just two of the many services offered by TD Ameritrade, which fulfills all the requirements of a full-service brokerage. Every conceivable form of account is supported. In addition to it, both futures and FX trading are made available. TD Ameritrade customers are restricted to trading only U.S. and Canadian-listed assets and do not have access to fractional shares or overseas trading.
- Cryptocurrency: TD Ameritrade does not support the buying or selling of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, Ethereum, or Dogecoin at this time.
- Retirement Services: TD Ameritrade is one of our top selections for top IRA suppliers and provides retirement services, including fee-free standard, Roth, and rollover individual retirement accounts (IRAs).
E*Trade
E*TRADE is a full-service brokerage. Therefore it offers everything an investor would anticipate receiving from such a firm. Stocks, options, and bonds are just some of the investment instruments that may be purchased. Moreover, E*TRADE Capital Management also provides access to professional financial planning services. E*TRADE Bank is the institution that caters to customers' banking needs, while E*TRADE Futures LLC is the company that facilitates futures trading.
- Other Services: Fractional shares, cryptocurrency trading, international trading, and FX trading are some of the most significant services that are unavailable on E*TRADE's platform.
- Cryptocurrencies: E*TRADE does not offer trading in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. Ether, Bitcoin, and Micro Bitcoin futures are all available through this platform.
- User Friendly: Users can go more rapidly from analysis to trading with E*TRADE's user-friendly website and mobile app, which allow fast access to the most important tools and plain menus.
- Paper trading Services: It allows users to get expertise on a network that is similar to Power E*TRADE but has more additional features and more possibilities for customization. Investors may practice paper trading on this platform. You may upgrade both the desktop software and the mobile application when you are prepared to do so. Power E*TRADE comes packaged with its smartphone app.
Merrill Edge.
Merrill Edge offers a variety of services that conform to the standard of the business and go above and beyond it with their online banking services. Having said that, active traders will feel like they are missing out on something. The following types of investments are available: stocks, ETFs, options, mutual funds, and bonds. There is no provision to purchase fractional shares, futures, FX, or cryptocurrencies.
- Investment advice: To self-direct the investments, Merrill Edge has introduced a guided Investing program that includes automated portfolio management (through Robo-advisors that has a restriction of a minimum $1,000 investment). Their investment system is a highly scalable financial advisory with an assistant (with a restriction of a minimum $20,000 investment).
- Cryptocurrency: It is not a tradeable asset on Merrill Edge. The company does not support cryptocurrency. If you want to trade popular tokens like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Dogecoin, you must sign up for an account with a cryptocurrency exchange.
- Retirement services: Merrill provides regular, Roth, and rollover IRAs, and it was ranked among the top IRA accounts in our 2022 study.
Webull
Webull allows investors to buy and sell stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), options, fractional shares, and short sale shares. Webull provides traders with access to initial public offerings (IPOs) without mandating a minimum account balance.
- No Such Services: There is no support for mutual funds, futures, currencies, or bonds on this platform. There are no banking services, automated investment portfolios, or advisory services available with Webull.
- Cryptocurrencies: Webull allows users to trade almost a dozen of the most prominent cryptocurrencies, including BTC- Bitcoin, ETH- Ethereum, BTC- Bitcoin Cash, LTC- Litecoin, DOGE- Dogecoin, ZEC- Zcash, XLM- Stella Lumens, ETC- Ethereum Classic, ADA- Cardano, and Dash through Apex Crypto.
