Trading stocks online can be very stimulating. It is both, either a great hobby or a full time job. In both cases you can earn much money. The stock market has made millionaires since the very beginnings of share trading. In the past you could trade stocks only for long term profits, today you can make profits within minutes.

Today you can buy and sell stocks around the clock in almost every stock market in the world. The US stock market is still very popular but why not investing in some of the great companies overseas? It has become so easy today to buy shares online that everybody with a PC and access to the Internet can do it.

Everything is at your fingertips, the latest stock quotes, financial news, real time charts with indicators, market commentary and analysis. Whatever you need is right on you desktop. You only need to make a decision what to buy and press a button. Within seconds you are the owner of the stocks you wanted.

Today there is almost no difference between a trader behind a trading desk at the bank and a private investor sitting behind his home computer. Both have cheap access to real time data of all the stocks they like to follow. The only difference might be the money an institutional investor has compared to a private trader.

If you want to invest online then you must decide if you want to do everything yourself or if you need advice from an experienced investment adviser. A full service broker can give you a helping help with all your questions you might have but he will charge of course for this service. A discount broker will just offer you fast and cheap order execution and you will have to make all trading decisions alone.

Many are attracted by the fast profits you can make in the stock market. In fat it is possible to buy and sell stocks with a profit within seconds today. But be aware of the trading costs. A trade can easily cost you $5 or more and if you trade frequently, this adds up to a big sum. There are many discount brokers today but when the trade execution takes more than a minute then you probably should try another one.

There are different types of trading platforms. The easy ones just offer basic order entry methods which are sufficient for the average trader and investor who places less than one trade a day. The more advanced ones offering highly sophisticated ways of routing your order to different market places. The advantage of these trading platforms lies in their execution speed but the handling requires some experience. Day traders who execute up to hundreds of trades per day are using such direct access trading platforms.

An investor has different goals than a speculator. Both want to make money but the strategies are different. There is plenty of room for every trader. You can choose between thousands of stocks every day. The markets are open for more than six hours a day, plus the extended trading hours.