The first thing you need to do when starting to invest online is to find a quality and reliable online investment brokerage firm. This is a very important step because you want to make sure you pick a broker that has a competitive price for stock trades and also have low fees.

Below you will find my online investing review. I judged each online broker on account minimum, IRA fees, and cost of a market trade.

#1 Top Choice - TradeKing - TradeKing is a discount broker that allows you to place stock trades for $4.95.

TradeKing also has NO account minimum which makes it the perfect place for any investor to get started. You can get started with $25 if you would like and there are no account inactivity fees so there is no need to worry about placing a certain amount of trades per month.

TradeKing also has no account minimum for IRA’s. You can open it with any amount that you would like. TradeKing gets our highest recommendation and it the perfect place to start your online investing.

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#2 E-Trade - Requires a $1,000 account minimum and has no IRA account min. They offer real time trades for $12.99. Another great option for an online investment broker.

#3 TD Ameritrade - Requires a $2,000 account minimum and no account minimum for IRA accounts. They offer real time trades for $9.99

#4 Fidelity - Requires a $2,500 account minimum for personal and IRA accounts. Offers real time trades for $19.95.

As you can see, TradeKing offers the best online investing accounts due to their low fees, no account minimums and $4.95 stock trades. In our online investment brokerage firm comparison review they get the top ranking.

Investing in mutual funds has many benefits that other investments can not offer. Mutual funds continue to be one of the best ways for people to get started investing for retirement and also for seasoned investors.

One of the biggest advantages that mutual funds give investors is simplicity. Mutual fund statistics are easily attainable and there is little need for exhaustive research that individual stock investing requires. Research is still needed but on a much smaller scale.

Another advantage of mutual funds is diversification. Mutual funds invest in a large pool of stocks and immediately give the investor a well diversified investment. Mutual funds invest in stocks in different sectors, different sizes, different countries, etc. This type of diversification would be much harder if you were investing in individual stocks.

Mutual funds also provide investors with professional management. Mutual funds are run by highly trained fund managers who’s job is to closely monitor the funds performance and follow all companies that the fund is invested in. Most individual investors do not have the time or resources to do this type of management.

Lower investment fees are another great benefit of mutual fund investing. When you buy a share of a mutual fund you instantly have a stake in a large number of companies. If you were to buy each of these stocks one by one you would incur very high brokerage fees. Mutual funds also have the ability to buy stocks at lower fees due to their large volume purchases.

These are just a few of the advantages of investing in mutual funds and there are many more to add to it, like liquidity.  Investing in mutual funds is a great place for online investing beginners to get started.