Hey folks, I had a few specific questions I'd like to ask and hoped that some people could chime in, offer thoughts and opinions. I'm pretty excited as it's a big step forward in my financial education and practice to open a trading account, especially one with options trading eligability. I'll start by saying that I'm not putting a ton of money in this account, $1000 to start, and if I lose it all in a week, which I certainly hope doesn't happen and shouldn't happen with how I want to slowly enter the direct investing market, well, then I'll have learned a pretty cheap lesson and return to my normal practice of spreading my savings amongst mutual funds over 5+ years to grow.
I do think that I will outperform my mutual funds over a year or two term, and Direct Investing is getting my feet wet and gaining that skin in the game experience.
My questions specifically now that I've done my research and sussed out quarterly fees, trading fees, which seem a bit high to me, and when I asked what made TD Ameritrade's trading platform than, say Questrade, or others, he said that the main thing is the wealth of information available, the availability as a client to book meetings with their Direct Investing advisors and more reliable news in one place that's unbiased or if you're more skeptical, less biased, than news sites like Motley Fool or Seeking Alpha. To me, that summary convinced me that it is for me, a beginner worth $25/quarter. The trading fees for equities seems a bit high ($10/trade), but given my primarily goal in this exercise is experience and education, this is acceptable, and I can factor in the $20 fee for a buy/sell execution set into the profitability of a stock when exercising a sell. I forgot to check their options trading fees, but will be correcting this next week when I go in to sign the account.
My questions are more specifically related to options in this case. I want to know what liabilities their are in options. If I understand things correctly, a person may issue options contracts in addition to trading them, and issuers of options accept significant liabilities for significant opportunity to greater earning, so liability in writing contracts would be very high, but the only liability to the purchase of calls and puts would be in the money you put in, or the cost per option. You can never lose more than the cost of the option, as an option is the right to buy/sell, but not the obligation at a strike price.
Bit long, but I've super excited about this forward movement in my financial experience, and hope I can get this cleared up.
Other than that, I'm curious of people's opinions if they have any, and any experience with the TD Ameritrade web broker client and thinkorswim.
Submitted June 27, 2017 at 10:46PM by wild_solitude http://ift.tt/2sfDUR7
