Hi. May I ask what are the basic criteria to open an online share dealing account? Does it depend on how much money you have in your account? Your credit rating? Salary? I am new to this and would like to know more about it before I apply an online trading account. Thank you very much in advance.
It's all a matter of having a minimum balance. For Scottrade it's $500 with a $7 fee per tranaction, and with ING it's even lower (I forget how much) with a $4 fee per transaction. I hear ING has bad customer service, and is slow to process peoples transactions though, so I wouldn't recommend them. There are other companies like TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, and E-trade, which have higher transaction fees, but still relatively low. Lastly, there are many companies like Forex.com, Zecco, etc... which allow people with relatively low amounts of money to invest in the high speed currency trade (i.e forex) market.
Note to the person below, account minimums protect the investor with a low amount money, because if the amount of money is too low, then one will lose more money in transactions fees, than gains from share values increasing. This was one of the complaints of ING (sharebuilder). There are many unhappy customers of ING, which had their accounts wiped out trading, from the trading fee, because their balance was too small, and the profits were less than trading fee.