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Choosing a stock broker can be an annoying task. While they all seem the same, there are differences in commission rates that you should be aware of. Depending on the type of investor you are, you may end up paying too many fees depending on the broker you choose. Here are some tips for choosing the best stock broker, depending on the type of investor you are.

1. Casual investor. If you are casual investor with a moderate amount of capital ($200k or less), then chances are most of your money is in ETFs or index funds. In this case, a discount broker is fine. You will rarely make many trades and you do not need much advice since you are just investing in standard, safe investments. A brokerage like TD Ameritrade is good for you since they have $9.99 trades.

2. Frequent trader. If you are a chartist, then finding a broker with low fees is a very high priority. Most discount brokers will give discounts to people who trade frequently. One example is E-trade. Another site like Interactive Brokers might be good for you too. Be careful with this sort of investment style, as fees may gobble up all of your profits!

3. High net worth investor. If you have $1 million+ in the stock market, then chances are you can get a discount on how much you pay per trade. This is especially the case with the established, big firms such as Fidelity. Fidelity offers $8 trades to those with $1 million+ in their Fidelity accounts.

4. Short seller. If you plan on selling many stocks short, you need a broker that has access to these shares so that you can short them. Most of these brokerages will be able to short mid and large caps for you, but many do not have access to a large percentage of the small cap stocks. Interactive Brokers might be the best broker for short sellers.

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Negotiating skills are a nonnegotiable requirement for success, but few people understand the structures, techniques and approaches available to them in an attempt to gain successful results. Effective negotiation means more than just getting what you want. It means arriving at a solution that satisfies all parties and creates future opportunities. Fine tune your communication style. Listening is a key part of effective communication. What is and is not said is key during negotiations and in building professional relationship. Establish an assertive approach, communicate in a clear fashion, remain professional, be patient, try to avoid aggressive behaviors. Neutralize objectives presented by the counterpart and negotiate with confidence.

Being aggressive means standing up for yourself in ways that violate the rights of others.
Aggressive behavior is typically punishing, hostile, blaming, and demanding. It can involve threats, name-calling, and even actual physical contact. It can also involve sarcasm, catty comments, gossip and “slips of the tongue.” Negotiation training will give you the crucial negotiation skill, strategies, tools and techniques you must have to effectively handle negotiations ranging from sales, contract, labor and business negotiations, to international negotiations involving business and political conflict to all varieties of personal negotiations.

Negotiation Tips and Goals

1. Improve personal and professional profitability.
2. Achieve desired outcomes and create synergy while fostering relationships.
3. Maximize financial returns and value in negotiations.
4. Avoid being cheated.
5. Neutralize difficult negotiators and their tactics.
6. Enter into and conduct negotiations with confidence.
7. Know when and how to walk away from a negotiation.
8. Improve personal relationships with colleagues, clients and loved ones.
9. Build leadership and team building skills.
10. Turn cultural differences into assets rather than liabilities.
Strategic thinking and planning is pivotal to your success in this business climate.

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Most people who invest in mutual funds don’t know what they are doing. They take advice from someone at a bank or perhaps a friend and plunk down money into a fund. Sometimes this strategy works, but most of the time, it doesn’t.

When you invest your money in a mutual fund, you are trusting someone to invest in the stock market for you. Because of this, you want to be sure this person knows what he or she is doing. Also, you want to make sure that this person is not charging you too much to manage your money for you. Mutual funds fees are “hidden,” in the sense that they do not charge you an upfront fee but rather a percentage of the amount of money in your account. If this percentage is too high, you would do better just blindly picking stocks yourself.

Here are five helpful tips for choosing the right mutual funds.

1. Keep the fees low. Generally, expense fees should not be much higher than 1% if it is just a basic domestic equity fund. You should never invest money in a fund that also charges a “load,” which is an additional fee that is ridiculous to pay. Never invest in funds that charge loads; those funds are for suckers.

2. Check the asset base. Mutual fund managers only know of so many good investments. When they have too much money to manage, they begin investing in stocks they don’t like much but need to invest in anyway or else they’ll just have money laying around. There’s little reason to invest in a fund with over $5 billion in assets. It’s best if it’s under $2 billion generally.

3. Consider an index fund. This is a fund that tracks a stock index, such as the S&P 500. For these funds, the manager just buys whatever stocks happen to be in the index. Since this is not much work, the fees are much lower. Even though this method is simple, it has proven to perform better than most mutual funds. Some high performance index funds include FSMKX (Fidelity S&P 500) and VIMSX (Vanguard S&P 400 Midcap.

4.  Evaluate the fund’s strategy. If you have a long term outlook, look for a more aggressive fund that invests in small-cap stocks, international stocks, and riskier stocks in general. High risk tends to result in high performance in the long run. If you are more risk-averse, consider an S&P 500 index fund.

5. Keep the fees low. Did I mention this already? Well, I’ll mention it again. This is where most people mess up. Make sure you are not paying a load or paying too much in fees to the mutual fund.

More information about mutual funds can be found at Research Mutual Funds.

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