7 – Opening your Brokerage Account
Before you start trading you need to first open a brokerage account. When you trade stocks you can open a cash or margin account. When you start trading opening a cash account is the best option as it will force you to manage your trades with the amount of money you actually have. Basically as long as you are taking long positions you won’t be able to lose more money than you have. After you gain more experience and build a discipline, a margin account can be very convenient. Basically your brokerage firm will usually allow you to borrow up to three times the amount of funds you have. This allows you to invest more money than you have and thus allow buying some stocks for which you see a good opportunity even if you don’t currently have the funds available. Obviously you will pay a little interest, but if you end up making a good profit with the stock, the interest should just be considered as a small tax for the gains this allowed you to make. A new trader should completely stay away from a margin account as you can find yourself into debts if you end up making big losses with funds you borrowed.
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