Online Investing Hacks

Hacks #54-58

When it’s time to buy and sell investments, you can complete your transactions on the Web in most cases. Submitting your orders electronically offers a lot of advantages. You can place trades any time you want, day or night, regardless of whether the markets are open. If you want to check something before completing a transaction, you can stop in the middle without tying up a broker on the telephone. In most cases, orders are executed almost immediately. Even better, you usually pay a lower commission for taking the do-it-yourself route.

Submitting your orders electronically does have some disadvantages, though. Stock trades come in many shapes and forms [Hack #54] and not all brokerage firms offer every type of trade [Hack #89] as an online option. If you invest in bonds [Hack #58] , your choices are downright limited. However, all these limitations will continue to disappear as online trading becomes the method of choice and brokerages update their services to keep clients happy.

Because online trades are automated, they present special challenges unseen in interactions with humans. If you’ve got a fast trigger finger, a few extra mouse clicks could execute duplicate orders in your brokerage account—and you will have to execute additional trades to recover from those duplicates because most brokerages don’t provide a mechanism for undoing erroneous orders. When a web site’s response is slow, be very careful when placing online trades—wait until your browser has ...