Hardly a hot financial topic, but always an important one –- saving for retirement is often relegated to the back burner. The following five reminders are here to help you keep things simple and steady as you save for retirement. That way, you’ll never have to be concerned about what to do after you retire, except enjoy yourself during your golden age.

5 Golden Rules To Save For Retirement

Golden Rule #1: Start Saving If You Haven’t Done So Yet

I remember when I first heard about IRAs, 401Ks and thought…”boring! I’m too young to save now”. Then when the NASDAQ crashed in 2000, I remember how my boss at the current PR firm I was working at came screaming down the stairs saying “save as much as you can when you’re young!” I’ll never forget how insistent he was then. Right there and then, I vowed to start saving as much as possible.

Besides apathy, I think fear of not knowing how to invest your money can really get in the way. Don’t let it –- start socking the money away right now, and get help from your online stock brokerage to find an investing plan. You can start with a safe and basic money market account first, if you’re worried about what to do. Just start getting the money in there.

Golden Rule #2: Save As Much As You Can, When You Can

Ah yes, the daily addictions of Starbucks, your favorite and expensive Whole Foods products, and your love for movies. Or whatever your “vice” happens to be. Chances are, you can cut out all but your most favorite of life’s little pleasures and just put the money you save away for a rainy day, or for those “golden days” when you retire. Not to say that you can’t indulge yourself in a few luxuries, but pay attention to how often and how much you are spending. Perhaps you’ve got a Netflix subscription you aren’t using, or magazines you don’t have time to read; or perhaps you really aren’t using all those cell phone minutes you thought you would. So cut them back.

Expense tracking is a great way to see exactly where your money is going. Fire up Microsoft Excel and create expense categories that make the most sense to you, for monthly expense tracking. After 2-3 months you’ll get a pretty clear picture of where your money is going, and where you can cut back your expenses. Assuming you haven’t maxed out your credit cards and don’t have to worry about erasing debt, any money that you can save should be siphoned into your retirement savings.

Added health benefit of cutting expenses: I will bet that cutting back on any of your extraneous food expenditures will benefit your diet as well! What we purchase as snack foods or dinners out tends to be full of empty calories and useless to our wallets. Do you think Whole Foods desserts are really that healthy? Think again!

Golden Rule #3: Accounts With Tax-Advantages Are The Way To Go

The old-style pension plan was a guarantee for a good life after work for anyone who put their blood, sweat and tears into a company for years. Alas, those days are long gone, and the U.S. financial policymakers designed the tax-advantaged 401K as a vehicle for retirement. And not long after that came the IRA. We now have to fund our own “personal pension” and must save for retirement by getting the most out of these tax-advantaged accounts. The two types to consider are the traditional IRA and the Roth IRA.

Traditional 401K and IRA plans offer you the ability to save your money tax-deferred. You put the money in, and it grows tax-free. Of course you’ll take a tax hit when you withdraw the money after retirement. Traditional plans have the advantage of reducing your income at the time of funding. However you will be heavily penalized if you withdraw from a traditional plan before you reach retirement age; so you wouldn’t think of doing that, right? Good.

Roth IRA plans also offer a flexibility that traditional plans don’t. You will be taxed as the money is put into the account, but down the road you won’t be taxed upon withdrawal. Many see this as a huge advantage due to inflation -– the taxes taken out now will be less than what you’d expect to pay out later, after you cash out your traditional plan upon retiring. Roth accounts also have special Roth IRA withdrawal rules that allow you to withdraw money under certain circumstances without penalty.

Golden Rule #4: Change Your Portfolio to Match Investment Goals

If you start investing during your younger years, time is definitely on your side, as with any type of saving. Not only will you be building up principal and benefiting from the compounding effect of starting early, you also have the opportunity to be more aggressive/growth-focused with your investing strategy. Not that you have to be aggressive, but you don’t have to be as concerned as someone who begins saving for retirement later in life.

If you are someone who has started later — don’t worry, now is better than never. You may or may not want to focus on a moderate to conservative/income-focused strategy with investments (like a low-fee or no load mutual fund) in order to preserve more principal or to hedge your risk in case of a falling market. This more conservative approach can be effective if you prefer an approach to investing that is more hands-off. On the other hand, if you enjoy watching the market more closely, then you might be able to be more aggressive in your plan.

Golden Rule #5: Reassess Your Portfolio At Least Once a Year

At the very minimum, you should reassess your portfolio yearly to make sure you are matching your goals. Of course, paying attention to the general economic status of the United States will also help you tune your investing plans as you go. Now that you’ve got some more tools in your arsenal to go after your financial planning goals for retirement, get to saving if you haven’t already, and adjust your plan as necessary.

David Hamilton (aka FPT Guy) is owner and author of Financial Planning Tips, where you can find information on a wide variety of topics on personal finance. Besides being passionate about his finance blog and helping others keep their finances in check, David also enjoys playing music, staying healthy, spending time with family and friends, and traveling the world.

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

5 Golden Rules To Save For Retirement

For an online brokerage that has great pricing as well as great ongoing promotions, check out OptionsHouse. Their services are for the active stock and options trader and investor. You can take advantage of their top-notch suite of tools (including Virtual Trading) and they’ll give you 100 free complementary trades when you open a real trading account, if you decide to get started with trading. They also have a few other promotions that make signing up for this stock and options trading brokerage worth a look. Remember that their pricing is some of the best around for stock brokers, with a flat rate of $2.95 per stock trade, and $5 for up to 5 contracts (or $8.50 plus .15/contract).

OptionsHouse Free Trades & Other Promotions

Note that some of the offers can’t be taken together when you sign up for an account, so make sure you review the information carefully. Here’s a full list of current promotions from OptionsHouse, but we also discuss them below.

100 Commission Free Sales

There’s nothing more exhilarating than making a successful trade, except maybe if you make that trade for free? All new OptionsHouse customers have the opportunity to trade without spending a cent. Get 100 free trades when you sign up for an OptionsHouse brokerage account Just fund your new account with $3,000 or more and enjoy your next 100 trades at no cost. You’ll need to execute the trades within 60 days of funding your account, otherwise they will expire unused.

90 Days of Free Investment Coaching

If you’re new to options investing or if you need to beef up your learning in this area, you can take advantage of one of the most comprehensive knowledge centers for free for the first 90 days upon opening a new OptionsHouse account and placing at least $1,000 in your cash account or $2,000 for margin accounts. It’s a great opportunity to receive professional stock and options trading advice for zero cost.

Refer A Friend

OptionsHouse will reward you for letting your friends know about their trading platform. If you recommend OptionsHouse to a friend and they open an account with this brokerage, then you get your choice of $50 or 10 free trades. Not only does your friend get the benefit of a great brokerage, but you also get paid for doing nothing more than you would have done anyway!

90 Day Subscription to Morningstar

As if having an OptionsHouse brokerage account wasn’t enough. Now, OptionsHouse offers the power of its online brokerage combined with the unparalleled research and in-depth analysis of Morningstar to give you unlimited access to a complete online resource — research, articles, forums, Options Investor Guide, the OptionInvestor weekly report and the StockInvestor monthly newsletter. This is all FREE for 90 days after funding your new OptionsHouse trading account with $1,000 for a cash account or $2,000 for a margin account.

ACAT Transfer Rebate: $100 To Switch Brokers

If you’d like to consider switching brokers, you’ve got the extra incentive of receiving up to $100 if you move your funds over to OptionsHouse. Some brokers refund you for any fees incurred when you do the switch, and OH is no exception. You can move your mutual funds, options and stocks over without having to worry about transfer fees.

Wire Fees Rebate

You can open a brokerage account and get same day funding through OptionsHouse’s electronic transfer features. But as a new customer, you can also receive a wire fee rebate if you so choose to take advantage of this promotion. Your wire transfer fees will be covered up to $25. If you’re interested, you can get more information about this offer through this link.

And for more details about this highly regarded online stock broker, you can check out our OptionsHouse review here. If you’re an active investor or trader, it may be worth looking into this online firm. The extra benefits are certainly a great bonus as well!

For those interested, here are more free online stock trading promotions.

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

OptionsHouse Free Trades & Other Promotions

It’s time for an update on the investment markets. I’ve got a set of new INO.com investment videos that may be of interest to market traders. Before we get to introducing these videos, I’d like to mention that the trading tool used to analyze recent market events is the INO tool called MarketClub. I’ve previously reviewed the MarketClub trading system here, but you can certainly see it in action in the videos below.

Will The Dollar Index Rally? Tracking a Leveraged ETF for the Euro

Here are some short videos for your viewing pleasure:

Video 1: Is the Dollar Index (USDX) about to rally? The USDX is a measure of the dollar’s value against a basket of other currencies.

It is a weighted geometric mean of the dollar’s value compared with the following currencies:

• Swiss Franc (CHF) 3.6% weight
• Swedish Krona (SEK), 4.2% weight
• Canadian Dollar (CAD), 9.1% weight
• Pound Sterling (GBP), 11.9% weight
• Japanese Yen (JPY), 13.6% weight
• Euro (EUR), 57.6% weight

Using Fibonacci retracement methods, Adam Hewison (INO.com’s expert trader) shows us that this index may recover. While there are some mixed signals in technical analysis indicators that show a shakiness in the USDX, the expectation here is that it will go back up.

Video 2: A look at the Proshares UltraShort Euro (EUO). This is a leveraged ETF that lets you go short the Euro and long the US Dollar when you take a position in it. As a leveraged ETF, it gives you twice the leverage and movement made by its benchmark. If you suspect that the Euro will be declining further, then this is an investment you can look into. More about the weak Euro here.

Video 3: Is the Euro on shaky ground? Recently the Euro has experienced a rally. This summer, we are seeing a rise in the Euro, which you can view via the EURUSD chart. Again, using Fibonacci retracement methods, the signals show that the Euro vs Dollar relationship is headed towards a one to one parity.

Video 4: Technical trend indicators turning negative for the Euro. INO.com’s trading signals (called Trading Triangles) are flashing red for the Euro. We’re looking for a one to one ratio between the Euro and the US Dollar. This may be an opportunity to go short on the EURUSD.

Video 5: Death cross pattern in the S & P 500 chart. An interesting pattern emerges when you review the S & P 500 Daily Candlestick chart. When the 50 day moving average (DMA) is plotted against the 200 day moving average, a death cross pattern becomes evident. The 50 DMA fell below the 200 DMA in early July and this sort of thing could signify another downtrend for the market.

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Will The Dollar Index Rally? Tracking a Leveraged ETF for the Euro

If the idea of investing intimidates you, then you might be interested in a company that allows you to buy stocks online without a premium price tag. Or maybe you’ve already tried a few online stock brokerage firms, but you want the simplicity of automatic investing.

This time out, let’s take a look at ShareBuilder. ShareBuilder is offered by ING Direct, which is popular thanks to its online savings account and Electric Orange checking account. There are several types of ShareBuilder accounts including:

• Individual or joint accounts
• Retirement accounts: traditional, Roth, or rollover IRAs
• For children: Educational Savings Account or a custodial account

You aren’t limited to one type of account. If you have several goals, then you’re welcome to have multiple accounts with just one log-in. This is a convenience compared to having accounts all over town or the country.

ShareBuilder’s Pricing

Once you figure out which type of account you’d like, you need to pick out a pricing plan. The Basic account charges you $4 per scheduled investment and there’s no subscription fee. You might prefer this account if you’re a novice investor or you don’t plan to invest very often. Tools you can access are PortfolioBuilder and Gain & Loss Tracking.

With the Standard account, you’re allowed to have 6 scheduled investments for $12 each month. You’ll also be able to use various investing tools as much as you’d like. These tools include PortfolioBuilder, Gain & Loss Tracking, and Stock Grades. ShareBuilder is offering a free one-month trial of the Standard Account. This can allow you to get familiar with ShareBuilder’s features without committing a lot of cash to it.

The Advantage account gives you up to 20 scheduled investments for $20. In addition, you can explore all the investment tools, such as the ones mentioned above, the Stock Reports and IPO Priority Notification.

There’s no account minimum, and you don’t have to lose money to inactivity fees. You can fund your account with automatic electronic fund transfers from your checking or high yield savings account.

Or you can mail in a check, wire the deposit, or even fund it through a payroll deduction. If you already have a brokerage account, then ShareBuilder will allow you to transfer funds from it for free. You might even be eligible for a $100 bonus if you transfer a minimum of $500 from another brokerage and you fill out the form.

There are more than 7,000 stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs for you to choose from. You can make your investment choices in real-time during market hours. If the market’s open, you can buy and sell in seconds. That way, if you spot a buying opportunity, you can act on it quickly.

Real-time trades cost $9.95 per online trade. And if you want phone trades for real-time and mutual fund trades, they will cost you $19.95. Here’s where to go to get more info. Also, note that at times, ShareBuilder holds promotions that you may want to take advantage of.

Automate Your Investing

To make your investments grow on a regular basis, you can opt to automate your investing. Choose from weekly, biweekly, or monthly investments. You can even buy your stocks in specific amounts. If you go the automatic route, your investments will happen on Tuesdays.

Research and Tools

If you aren’t sure where to start your portfolio, the PortfolioBuilder tool can help. It can assist you with a personalized portfolio and a profile analysis that can examine your risk tolerance. When you’re ready, you can use the portfolio for your automated investment plan.

Research tools include stock, ETF, and mutual fund finders; the Quick Fund Selector; a watch list; and a tool to help you check historic prices on certain stocks that may interest you.

When you provide your email address and name, ShareBuilder will send you a guide that covers the basics of investing.

As with many investments, you need to remember that your account can lose money. Plus, securities aren’t insured by the FDIC the way checking and savings accounts are backed by the government.

But all in all, getting started with buying stocks doesn’t have to be an ordeal. If you’re willing to try online investing and you don’t want to pay a ton of fees, then check out ShareBuilder. Over time, your investments here can be worth quite a bit.

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Sharebuilder Broker Review

Here’s the latest on the investment markets. I’m presenting a few investment videos that give us a peek into what a market analyst thinks will be happening in the near future. With things a bit unstable right now, maybe a look at the markets through the eyes of someone with more than a bit of trading experience will be helpful. Not saying you should heed everything this technical analyst says, but checking out some of his prognostications based on technical analysis charts is one way to get a glimpse of how some experienced investors and traders are analyzing things at the moment.

Video 1 shows us how Japanese candlesticks can be used to track the Gold market. Gold has been a popular asset recently due to the unfavorable movements we’ve been seeing in the equity markets. So the question arises: is there still room for Gold to move up? According to this video, there’s potential for some upward movement.

Video 2 gives us an update on the S & P index. It looks dire in the short term.

Video 3 is about the crude oil market. Given the latest events in the Gulf (re the oil spill), it’s a good idea to keep an eye on crude oil prices.

Video 4 shares some insights on how to use Fibonacci retracement methods to analyze the markets. In this example, the crude oil market chart is used to explain this trading strategy.

Video 5 looks at one area of the Forex market: the Spot EURO vs USD (the US Dollar). We’ve tracked this market somewhat over the past few weeks, and we’re now seeing some signs that suggest that the EURO could be having an impact on how the equity markets in the U.S. and Europe are behaving. For those who are new to the Forex scene, you may want to check out the Spot EURO, the EURO futures market at the CME (or Chicago Mercantile Exchange) and the ETF FXE. These are all tradable.

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This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Tracking The Gold Market, Crude Oil & Forex Euro (Videos)

So you’ve finally been able to start putting money away for the next rainy day. You’ve been socking it away into an ordinary savings account where you might be earning ½ % interest or less. Are you wondering what you could be doing with your savings that might make it start to grow? If you’re not, you should be. Here are a few ways you can invest your money and earn up to 5% while protecting your savings.

Preferred Stocks

Preferred stocks are assets that look a lot more like bonds than traditional stocks. The reason is because the dividend, or the money paid to you as the stockholder, is almost always fixed. Preferred stocks are almost always issued by banks, insurers and investment trusts, though other companies can issue them as well. Some preferred stocks pay out monthly and the dividend is usually much higher than those issued by common stocks. The main drawback is that as the interest rate rises, the preferred stock will lose value. Plus, a company can suspend dividends on these stocks if they run into turbulent financial periods.

Blue Chip Stocks

Blue chip stocks are another investment you can make that will keep your risk relatively low while earning you a nice return. These companies have been around and been successful for many years, weathering financial downturns and other crises well. Some of the safest investments are in utilities, energy, and drug companies. These companies generally weather economic downturns well.

REITs

REITs or real estate investment trusts are generally a good bet when it comes to earning a nice return on your investment. These can be a little shakier than others, though, since most are backed by properties. The safest REITs to invest in are the ones that hold healthcare related properties such as hospitals and other medical buildings. This is because the medical field is a growth industry while other sectors of the real estate market are highly susceptible to economic swings.

One kind of hybrid REIT is Annaly (you can read more about this product here). This REIT-like investment does not depend on the real estate market to back it. As a matter of fact, this product doesn’t own one property at all. It buys federally guaranteed mortgage securities. This is a great opportunity to earn a nice return as long as the Federal Reserve holds interest rates steady because Annaly makes tons of cash; and because of its structure, it’s forced to pay out 90% or more of its net income to its shareholders. The current return rate on this investment is around 15%.

Online Savings Accounts

For those of you who shy away from traditional investing, take another look at where you are putting your money. Online savings accounts like EverBank, HSBC Advance and Ally Bank offer much higher interest rates than traditional brick and mortar banks, up to 200% better. Most traditional savings accounts offer under 1% interest, and many don’t offer anything at all. Online savings account products offer anywhere from 1% up to 3% all while keeping your money safe and liquid, meaning that your deposits are insured by the FDIC as long as the institution is a member. Also, you can remove your funds at any time in any amount without penalty.

Savings Bonds

Another idea for the investment-shy individual is savings bonds. Savings bonds are backed by the federal government and are guaranteed to earn a better rate than your savings account, though you’re going to have to wait several years to realize the gain.

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Easy Investment Tips: Where To Invest Your Money

Here’s another short investment video from INO.com. It’s another clip that shows the weak Euro, giving us a peek at how it’s been behaving recently. Technical analyst, Adam Hewison of INO.com is quite convinced that the Euro will eventually fall to equal the US dollar: e.g. 1 Euro = 1 US dollar. And if you check out the currency chart in the video, you’ll see just how deep the slide has been for the Euro over the past year.

It seems that as soon as the year turned, things went south for this currency. So let’s take a quick look at how things have shaped up for it over the years: in mid-2008, we saw the high of the EURUSD at almost 1.60, thanks to the strength of the Euro — it was a time when many Americans, including myself, lamented the great bargains that many foreigners were enjoying upon visiting our shores. Everything back then was so much cheaper in America; beyond our merchandise, real estate was also available for a song.

While our real estate market hasn’t changed all that much, the currency exchange situation has. Nowadays, the EURUSD measure is now at 1.20, with the likelihood of it falling to 1.00. The last time this has happened was in 2003, if you can believe it. And it is also possible that this market will stay quite oversold for a long time. It’s happened before. The weakest the Euro has been against the dollar was around 1 Euro to 83 cents, and the way things are going, there’s the potential that the currency measure will be headed down even further in the near future.

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Is The Market for Euro Currency Oversold?

Here’s the latest on the euro vs dollar situation. I still remember the time when the euro was quite strong and everyone was complaining about how weak the dollar was. Those days are now gone and the question we now face is this: just how far can the weak euro go?

So what do you think, is it possible for the euro to equal the dollar at some point? Given just how shaky the European economies have been (e.g. the Greek debt problem and all the European countries virtually going broke while lending money to each other), we’re now witness to this latest irony: who knew that there’d be a time when we’d recognize the U.S. as the pillar of strength among the Western economies. Who knew?

Seems like the financial crisis all over again, except it’s happening in Europe, and we’re seeing the consequences reflected in their currency. The difference between our situation in the U.S. and what’s going on in Europe is that we’re able to print more currency if push comes to shove (even at the risk of facing inflation). Unfortunately, the euro may not have the same kind of flexibility as the dollar since there are 16 European nations that are tied to the euro currency.

So check out this INO.com video that discusses the behavior of these currencies. As the video unfolds, it goes through the historical EURUSD chart, which tracks the behavior of the Euro vs Dollar, showing this index’s high at the beginning of the year. During that time, the euro was much stronger against the dollar, and that peak can be attributed to the negative economic climate we were then seeing in the U.S. with housing prices down, the concerns surrounding financial bailouts and the high unemployment rate. Isn’t it ironic that the U.S. is now recognized as the healthier economy? Not that much has changed since then, but everything is always relative, and it just so happens that the environment elsewhere is in worse shape than how things are over here, at least for now.

If you want to see more, check out the INO.com video here.

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

How Low Can The Weak Euro Go?

If you’re an active trader and have been using technical analysis to gauge how things are going so far in the stock market, you may be interested in this INO.com video’s assessment of what’s in store for U.S. equities in the near future.

Time To Short The Stock Market? A New INO.com Video

According to this stock trading video, we’re headed for much lower numbers in the investment markets. While there is no guarantee of what could happen down the road, the MarketClub stock trading system’s indicators are all flashing red at the moment, pointing to a Fibonacci retracement to 944 in the S & P 500 index. This is ultimately a 50% slump from recent highs. Technical analysts call these numbers and points in the chart as “targets”. Right now, the call made by INO.com’s resident technical analyst, Adam Hewison, brands this market as unhealthy, and so if you’re a market timer, you may be inclined to stay out of the market or to think about possibly shorting it.

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This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

Time To Short The Stock Market? INO.com Video

When it comes to online stock and options trading, there are plenty of choices out there. Ideally, we want a site that offers a good selection of tools as well as a reasonable fee structure. Today, I’ll take a look at tradeMONSTER, which is considered a cheap discount broker with a good reputation.

TradeMonster Review: Cheap Discount Broker For Your Investments

Instead of letting investors set and forget their trades for stocks and options, tradeMONSTER prefers to help you by recommending a more proactive approach. This approach is called tradeCYCLE, and it involves a series of steps to guide you into making better investment decisions. Some of these steps include using research tools, developing trade strategies, and testing your strategies. You’ll also find assistance with executing your trades, making an exit plan to minimize losses, and using the AdjustTrade tool to make the most out of your trades.

Since TradeMonster runs on an online platform, you don’t have to worry about downloading any software. Plus, you’ll be able to access your account from any computer with an Internet connection. You can customize the trading platform to show the data you prefer; it’ll remember your settings when you exit. Making trades can be as easy as selecting a stock and placing your order, and you can fine tune your strategy practically anytime you like.

TradeMonster’s Pricing Structure

The price structure at tradeMONSTER seems fairly straightforward: they claim to have no hidden fees. For stocks, you’ll pay $7.50 per trade. Options are $.50 per contract, with a minimum of $12.50 for single leg orders. For multi-leg orders, you’ll pay $.50 per contract, with a $7.50 minimum per leg.

For mutual funds, you’ll pay $15.00 per trade for purchases. It’s free to sell, though. Municipal, corporate, agency, and Treasury bonds are $15.00 per trade.

You can open an individual or joint account online. The company also offers custodial and trust accounts, corporate accounts, and no annual fee IRAs. To open an account, you’ll need to commit a minimum of $2,000 in cash and/or securities. Be prepared to disclose your date of birth, Social Security Number, and driver’s license number so your identity can be verified.

Get the Information You Need Quickly

You’ll be able to stay up to date with free real-time streaming quotes and charts. Want to check up on a particular company? Enter a stock symbol to see a report card that lists what the company does, its price to earnings ratio, its earnings track record and other details. You can also get detailed information from the portfolio analysis tool.

Besides stocks and options, tradeMONSTER offers bonds, mutual funds and ETFs. You can stick to one type of trade or go for a mixture for a diverse portfolio, depending on your preferences.

One feature I found interesting is the Twitter integration. If you want, you can tweet your trades or read other traders’ tweets. BlackBerry, iPhone, and iPod Touch users can also download apps to manage their tradeMONSTER accounts.

Investor Education and Practice

For those of you who’d like more information about online stock trading or strategies, there’s a Trading Education section. It includes articles on the basics of trading, video tutorials on trading strategies, webinars and events and a glossary. Using these resources, you can learn more about options Greeks, buying calls, covered calls, diversifying, and other topics. If you’re a novice to stocks and options, you’ll definitely want to arm yourself with as much information as you can before becoming an active trader.

In addition, there’s paperTRADE, a virtual stock trading system. If you have had limited experience with trading in the past, this tool can help you learn the basics before you commit your own money. It’s possible for you to virtually trade stocks and work with various options spreads using real data from the market. There’s even a reset button if you want to start over and you can practice after the market closes.

If you’re on the hunt for a new platform for stocks and/or options trading and you like actively managing your portfolio, then consider tradeMONSTER. It might be worth it to compare it to several other sites to see if you prefer its trading tools and pricing. Here’s where you can check out more online stock brokers.

This is a post from The Smarter Wallet.

TradeMonster Review: Cheap Discount Broker For Your Investments