Trade Easy with Ameritrade

Ameritrade.com is the official site of AMERITRADE, a company which has been providing broker services including online stock trading, online investing, and option trading since 1975.

The homepage of the site is done in shades of green and is easily navigable. The menu tabs have these options-Home, Portfolio & Accounts, Trade, Research and Ideas, Trading Tools, Planning & Retirement and Client Services.

The site automatically opens into the Home section in which the options are Why Choose TD Ameritrade? Open an account, Pricing, Account Types, Ways to Fund, FAQs and Apex. "When investing with TD Ameritrade, you will find state-of-the-art tools, outstanding personal service, affordable pricing and innovative technology" says the text under Why Choose TD Ameritrade? The other topics here are Fostering your independent spirit, Straightforward, affordable pricing, Independent, objective research to count on, Flexible support, outstanding service, Investing for your long-term plan, Powerful trading and market tools and Nationwide branch network.

The Open an account tab can be found in almost every page. Opening an account is quite easy and hassle-free here. You can actually start trading on the same day that you open the account. The various account types are listed under the account types head. The sections are Standard Accounts, Retirement, Education and Specialty Account Types.

Under the Portfolio and Accounts head, you can find articles like Balance and Positions, History and Statements, Gain/Loss, Cash Management, Watch Lists and Preferences.

Under Research and Ideas, you can find Markets, Stocks, Options, Mutual Funds, ETF's, Bond & CDs, Charts etc. You can find the latest in the market scenario here in addition to the news of the day. You can check out the trading tools like Streamer Suite, Command Center 2.0, QuoteScope, Advanced Analyzer, StrategyDesk etc.

Under Planning and Retirement comes topics like Portfolio Guidance, College Savings Plan, IRA Rollover, Retirement Planning, Tax planning, Small Business Financial planning etc.

If you are about to enter college and planning to invest, check out the college savings 101 under the college head. Here you can find quite a lot of other college related articles as well-Coverdell Education Savings account, Custodial account, College savings articles, college planning tools and calculators, college planning seminars etc. The page also has a link to a glossary of financial planning terms.

The site generates revenue from the various advertisements which can be found in many parts of the site.

Asha Prakash

Hi-Tech Editorial Division