A broker, when used in the Wall Street context, is an individual or
an organization who acts as a liaison between the buyer and the seller,
and in turn receives a commission or compensation for handling the
transaction.
The traditional Wall Street broker or brokerage house is associated
with bricks-n-mortar entities. With the advent of the internet,
however, online brokers are much more common. As a matter of fact,
all major brick-n-mortar brokerage houses are also doing business
online, simply because there is a huge business opportunity to be had,
online. As early as 1992, the pioneers of online brokerages
houses have recognizes the incredible opportunity that the internet has
to offer. The thought of having an immediate access to one's account has attracted the individual investors to join these early online
discount brokers,
in droves. Today, a plethora of online discount brokerage houses have
sprung up on the internet, some of which are offshoots from the
traditional trading houses such as Fidelity and Schwab, while others are
born from the web itself.
Many of the discount brokers online do not offer personalized advice
nor financial planning. Also, some do not offer trading software and
charting software that an investor would use to perform charting
analysis and trades. Instead, the discounted price or commission
means that the investor would have to be savvy enough to go at it alone
in finding the right charting software and trading platform. On
the other hand, with a full service brokerage house, the investor would
typically have at his disposal the research, analysis and advice from
the actual brokers themselves.
There are brokers that specialize in trading stocks, options and/or
mutual funds, while others have focused their specialty in just options
trading, forex trading, or the futures market. Regardless of which
market a broker specializes in, if an investor uses an online broker, there must also be software or
trading platforms that will allow the individual trader to access and
control his account. Depending on the type of brokerage house,
the investor will typically have, at his disposal, many different
trading platforms that are compatible with the broker's trading system.
In the case of Forex trading, when the individual investor signs up
with a brokerage house, he is also provided a dedicated trading system
that is optimized for that particular broker. Therefore, there is no
need for the investor to supply his own trading software, since the
trading application and all of the trading accessories are online and
provided by the broker. In many cases, the trading platform also
has educational resources, in addition to live quotes and real time
market data. In a complete trading system, such as the
Easy Forex Trading Platform, the investor can expect better
amenities such as charting software to
perform technical analysis, portfolio managers and other enabling tools
to provide the investor the best chance of success.