Another fast growing area of e-commerce is online securities trading. Stock traders used to be handled only through brokers who were paid commissions for services. However, due to the popularity of online trading, many brokerage houses have established a presence on the Web. Trading sites allow you to research securities, buy, sell and manage all of your investments from your desktop. Online trading often costs less than conventional brokerage.
Charles Schwab (www.schwab.com) has become one of the leading online trading providers. DLJ Direct (www.dljdirect.com) and Fidelity Investments (www.fidelity.com) offer similar services.
E*TRADE (www.etrade.com) is one of the leaders in online trading. The company was founded in 1982 to offer online stock quotes to the major investment firms. With the development of the Web, E*TRADE created their Web site www.etrade.com where individual investors could manage their own investments, eliminating the need for brokers.
At E*TRADE, you can buy, sell and research stocks, bonds and other securities. If you have little knowledge about buying and selling stocks, E*TRADE offers two games in which you use fake "game money" to carry out stock trades or stock and options trades. Each player starts with $100,000 in virtual trading dollars and is given access to charts, graphs and recent news articles to help the player choose their investments. There is no risk of losing real money, so the players can feel free to experiment with different trading strategies. Each trade takes approximately one minute to process. The goal of each game is, of course, to increase the value of your portfolio. The E*TRADE games are a friendly way for beginners to experiment with online trading. Each game lasts a month and, at the end of each game, thirty-two players with the highest-valued portfolios receive prizes.