How to Find a Stock Broker

Determine your investment objectives. If you're only using a small fraction of your assets to invest every now and then, you should make cost control your main priority. Use financial publications such as Kiplinger's and Barron's to compare one brokerage against the other, and see who offers the lowest commissions and fee structures. If you're investing larger sums that constitute the majority of your assets, you might want to choose your broker based on capabilities rather than price. Be aware that price and capability are not mutually exclusive, however, since some of the lowest-cost brokerages such as TradeStation and Interactive Brokers have consistently received the highest customer satisfaction rankings.
Decide whether you want to trade or invest. Trading involves frequent buying and selling of stocks in hopes of making small, recurrent profits. Investing, on the other hand, involves deploying your capital in one or more companies for at least a year. Typically, larger full-service stock brokers are better equipped to assist longer-term investors looking for help with analyzing the financial statements and business prospects of the companies they want to invest in, while discount brokers are essential for people who are self-directed, actively trade and seek to keep the cost of their commissions down.
Figure out how much active help and advice you want from your broker. If you're relatively new to investing or trading, you might want the assistance of a full-service broker, who can give you some advice on investing methods and procedures, such as how to buy a stock with a stop-limit order or how to set a trailing stop loss. If you're more independent-minded and already checked out the basics of investing and trading, you should set up an account with a discount broker. Be aware that even if you use a full-service broker, the advice you get will not necessarily improve your stock market returns.
Determine which types of stocks you want to invest in or trade. Some brokerages are only equipped to buy and sell shares of mainstream American companies that have minimum market capitalizations of tens of millions of dollars. If you intend to purchase shares in low-market capitalization companies, illiquid penny stocks, foreign entities, or other irregular securities, be sure that your broker can accommodate.
Make sure that the broker you're considering opening an account with is registered with the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which insures your account for up to $250,000. If you have a larger account, consider looking for brokers that carry extra insurance from private providers such as Lloyd's of London.

How to Trade Stock Futures (5 Steps)

Learn the mechanics of how to trade stock futures. Stock futures are traded as standardized contracts of 100 shares. They are issued for a specified time period and expire on the third Friday of their final month. At that point they must be settled. This means you must buy (or sell) the actual shares unless you have an offsetting option contract (see Step 5). The attraction of stock futures lies in the fact that they can be traded on margin, allowing investors to leverage trades and increase potential profits.
Open a margin account with a brokerage firm. Trading accounts with margin privileges are similar to regular (cash) brokerage accounts, except that you are allowed to borrow money or stock from the broker. Because you buy a futures contract instead of the stock, there are no interest charges. However, this is considered a margin transaction because your potential liability is greater than the money you put up as a margin requirement. A margin account typically requires a $2,000 minimum balance, although for day traders this may be as high as $25,000.
Place an order to for a call (buy) or put (sell) futures contract with your broker. SEC regulations require a 20 percent margin. For example, if you purchase a contract for a stock selling at $25 a share, you must put up $5 a share or $500. If the stock goes up by $5 a share you make $500---a 100 percent profit, instead of the 20 percent you would make by buying the stock itself.
Keep up with daily fluctuations in the market price of the stock. The risk when you trade stock futures is as great as the potential profit. If the stock falls in price (or rises for a put futures contract) your investment decreases quickly and you will get a margin call. For example (using the example from step 3), if the stock falls from $25 to $23 a share, your margin falls to $3 a share, or 13 percent of the share price. You must then add more funds or the broker has to close out the account. Since small changes in price have such a large effect, you need to monitor the stock on a daily basis, if not more often.
Close out the transaction when you are ready. Very few stock futures contracts are actually exercised (that is, the underlying shares purchased and delivered). Instead, trades are normally settled by purchasing a second futures contract of the opposite type (a put if you are holding a call and vice versa). The two contracts simply cancel each other out at expiration.