www.datek.com is another good one. it's good to hear that you are getting into investing so early in life! I wish I would have done that myself. If you are able to double your initial investments of 500 dollars 5 times it would be worth 24,000!
If you plan on putting money in weekly and have a low amount to start then http://www.sharebuilder.com is a good recommendation. For more active trading and low commissions I use both http://www.scottrade.com and http://www.ameritrade.com and have had great success with both.
Yah, Sharebuilder is what I've been using for a while. The only big turn off that I was hoping to avoid was the fact that Sharebuilder's purchases aren't live. But for $4 what can I expect?
It makes a bigger deal if you are trading in and out of stocks, but for a relatively small amount of money it is usually sufficient. That is the problem with a small amount of capital. A $7 commission on a $10,000 trade is a much smaller percentage expense than it is on $500. That's why you probably want to try to concentrate the money in the best stock you can find and look for doubles.
Sharebuilder is set up like that to let you accrue shares over a period of time. I think the account is set up in a way to "discourage" you from trading in and out. And why they can offer this at a discount. Collectively they can buy all shares on a given day. If you want to sell real time, you will have to pay 17.00 per transaction, so unless you have huge gains the 17.00 fee would have to be taken into account. (subtracted from your earnings) Nice to meet you and welcome to the forums :) [/quote]