Tag: stock market

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Financial Tech & Media Technology

Best Stock Trading Apps for 2021

Best Stock Trading Apps

2021 has been an incredible year for retail investors. With the historic surge in Gamestop stock thanks to ongoing short selling and Reddit-fueled investment research, millions upon millions of everyday people are hopping on the rocketship.

There are a lot of stock trading apps out there, and they can all blur together if you don’t know the ups and downs of each one. We’re going to go over some of the more popular ones, and give you an idea of which might be right for you and your needs, depending on what those are. Let’s take a look.

Robinhood

This app was already doing well when it went viral during the first part of the year in connection with Gamestop. Robinhood boasts an app that allows anyone to invest. They allow investment in stocks, ETFs, as well as options trading, and they require no minimum to invest. Their app is extremely simple, and they offer very little in the way of research tools or in-depth functionality.

E-Trade

One of the zero-commission trade model pioneers, E-Trade is a very popular stock trading platform with zero fees on most trades, and no account minimums to begin. The app is super easy to use and offers a huge array of features. One of the many brokers that support fractional shares, they make it easy to invest a few dollars at a time, so that anyone can start building wealth.

Fidelity

Fidelity has been around for a long time. They offer a huge array of research and tools that are made available to their investors. Additionally, account approval can take a little while. However, the ability to trade regular stocks, as well as many penny stocks, makes this a very appealing platform to many new investors. One downside of the app is that it is basically a tiny version of the website. It does not offer much in the way of streamlining compared to the web version.

Schwab

Schwab is a great platform for new investors and offers zero fees on most trades. They have provided a consistent trade experience for a long time, and are highly trusted brokers. Schwab offers a highly enjoyable trade experience since their interfaces are always intuitive, regardless of the device, it’s viewed on. They do lack the ability to set various alerts on stock movements in their app, however.

TD Ameritrade

One of the most loved apps comes from TD Ameritrade, called Thinkorswim. It provides an amazing amount of functionality for doing market research. They have a legendary trading platform and offer a huge amount of financial education resources for thier customers. They offer zero-cost trades like many others, and also support fractional shares with no account minimum required to invest.

Webull

Another extremely simple to use mobile app like Robinhood, Webull offers a much more extensive feature set than Robinhood, but still struggles to compete with research giants like Schwab and Fidelity. They offer zero-cost trades for stocks, options, and even crypto.

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Financial Tax Services

Want To Buy Stocks? How It Affects Taxes

investing in stock market and affect taxes

Stocks are hot these days and in some respects, the market is doing better than it’s ever done. Additionally, investing is easier than ever with the explosion of retail trading apps. But many people are hesitant to begin investing until they know how it’s going to impact their taxes. Here are the tax basics of investing in stocks.

Realized And Unrealized

If you open a standard brokerage account with any of the popular companies, you then deposit money and invest that money. You typically invest in a number of different stocks or funds, often referred to as “diversification”.  A few months go by, and all of your investments are up a bit.

You now have “unrealized” gains. Once you sell those investments or any part of them that has appreciated, you then have “realized” your gains. This is the same for losses. If your investments are down and you then sell them to stop your losses, you have turned your “paper” losses into “realized” capital losses.

Capital Gains

Once you invest through your brokerage of choice, and you have invested in a number of stocks. One of your stocks shoots to the moon, and you suddenly find yourself selling those stocks for a healthy sum. You now have realized your capital gains, and you will now have to eventually pay taxes on them. They’ll be listed on your upcoming 1099-B form that your brokerage will provide at the end of the tax season.

There is more, and it might be good news, it might be bad news, depending on your particular investments and gains. You’ve now got capital gains, and you need to pay taxes, but the tax rate is going to depend on how long you held that investment.

Investments that are sold less than a year after purchase are classified as short-term capital gains. These can be taxed up to 35%. However, if you keep your investments for a minimum of a year before selling, you can cut that down to 15% or less.

Capital Losses

It happened. Your investment tanked, and you lost big time. If you are still on paper, your losses are unrealized, but if you sold to stop the bleeding, then you can leverage those realized capital losses. Your capital losses can be claimed against your capital gains, to offset them and pay a lower tax rate. Additionally, if your losses cancel out your gains, you can claim up to $3k in additional losses against your income.

Dividends And Interest

Not only will you be taxed on capital gains, but you will also be taxed on dividends. These are periodic payments made to shareholders of certain stocks by the company they are invested in. You are taxed on dividends even if you do not sell any investments. The interest you can be taxed on is interest from bonds and will vary depending on the type of bond and interest that has been earned.