The biggest obstacle to stock market profits is an inability to control one’s emotions and make logical decisions. In the short-term, the prices of companies reflect the combined emotions of the entire investment community. When a majority of investors are worried about a company, its stock price is likely to decline; when a majority feel positive about the company’s future, its stock price tends to rise.
For online platforms, websites give the user options and availability of the stock he wishes for, across all the platforms available. If he places an order, it gets stored in a database. After the confirmation of the trading account and payments, the order gets forwarded and the user gets his stock, in the form of money, transferred to his trading account.
Control greed – Greed often influences traders in the following way; you enter a trade at $80 with a target of $95, but then it hits $95 and you think ‘I’ll just hold on a bit longer and increase profits further’. This only ends with you eventually losing big. The solution; stick rigidly to your strategy. Think long term and don’t deviate from your strategy, there’s simply no need to gamble.
Our mission has always been to help people make the most informed decisions about how, when and where to invest. Given recent market volatility, and the changes in the online brokerage industry, we are more committed than ever to providing our readers with unbiased and expert reviews of the top investing platforms for investors of all levels, for every kind of market.
Tax considerations – Where you trade and where your broker is situated may affect what type of tax and how much tax you will have to pay. Will you pay capital gains tax? Will you pay net income tax? If you start day trading with brokers from Canada, will you pay tax abroad and domestically? If you’re thinking of signing up with a far afield broker, find out the tax ramifications first.
Risk tolerance is a psychological trait that is genetically based, but positively influenced by education, income, and wealth (as these increase, risk tolerance appears to increase slightly) and negatively by age (as one gets older, risk tolerance decreases). Your risk tolerance is how you feel about risk and the degree of anxiety you feel when risk is present. In psychological terms, risk tolerance is defined as “the extent to which a person chooses to risk experiencing a less favorable outcome in the pursuit of a more favorable outcome.” In other words, would you risk $100 to win $1,000? Or $1,000 to win $1,000? All humans vary in their risk tolerance, and there is no “right” balance.

A broker is simply a licensed person through whom you can buy and sell these stocks. When you use an online platform, it essentially acts as an online broker. If someone wants to buy any product, he can contact a brokerage service. They would place an order and let him know the market price of the product. If the investor is interested, they would include a commission for themselves and process the order forward. If the user wishes to buy stock, the broker would forward his order to a stock exchange, which would approximately take 3 days to complete including the money exchange between the broker and the investor.