Investors may not be familiar with OptionsXpress but the online broker is very popular in the trading community. As a winner of numerous awards, OptionsXpress is a great online broker that must be looked at if you are interested in options trading. This review takes a look at why.

Options Trading with OptionsXpress

As its name suggests, OptionsXpress’ core competency is with options trading. With tools like its option Pricer and Xspreads, it’s very easy to keep track of option market to execute your trades correctly.

In addition, the online broker also has the most comprehensive options education available for its clients that I have seen. From the very basics to advanced topics, OptionsXpress has very easy to follow videos that guide and teach you.

No Hidden Fees with OptionsXpress

Unlike other brokers, OptionsXpress doesn’t charge for:

• real-time or streaming quotes
• standard withdrawals or deposits
• maintenance costs no matter how much you have in your account
• inactivity fees

Commissions with OptionsXpress

At first glance, the commission seemed high but OptionsXpress’ commissions for options is actually much lower.  The actual prices depend on how many contracts you trade but for anything that is more than 10 contracts, it’s much, much cheaper going with OptionsXpress.

Trade Futures and others with The Online Broker

With the name, you’d think that OptionsXpress is only offers an options trading platform but it also lets you trade stocks, bonds, funds, and others.  It is one of the only place I know that you can actually trade futures using the same account and it’s only $2.99 per contract.

Why You Might Want to Open an OptionsXpress Account

I opened an account for a cheaper way to trade options and to learn more advanced topics that the free education provide.  By looking at the website, they also seem to offer free webinars, free trading tools, free advanced research and a personal coaching program so once I’m done with the free educational videos, I will look further into that as well.  With very low commissions and no inactivity and maintenance fees, it makes sense for me to keep the account open and trade options when there are opportunities show up.

The account is free and opening process as quickly as 5 minutes, why not?

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Its beginning to look like the good ol days again as the past several weeks there has been numerous opportunities to make a crap load of money and we here at thetechnicaltrader.net have been banking huge profits with our Black Service Stock picks.

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This is an analysis of Trinity Industries (TRN), a railcar manufacturing and leasing business. I believe it’s undervalued for a number of reasons, all described in detail at the link provided.

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A savings bond calculator is very useful when some of your investments are in US savings bonds. The savings bond calculator is an online calculator put out by the US Treasury Department to help investors manage their savings bond portfolios. You can find the value of your US savings bonds using this savings bond calculator.

To start using the savings bond calculator, you need to input the initial investment. Depending on what type of savings bonds you are purchasing, you can generally invest a small amount at a time. Your initial investment can be as little as $25 or as large as $5,000.

The interest rate is an important part in using the savings bond calculator. The savings bond calculator has a drop down menu which you can choose the expected interest rate for your savings bonds. You can choose from 1% up to to 8%.

Some people do not invest a large sum of money all at once but prefer to invest a little at a time. The savings bond calculator will take into account periodic investment that you plan to make. The values available that are built into the savings bond calculator range from $0 to $10,000. You must make sure that the savings bonds you in will allow you to invest the amount you choose. The amount chosen in the savings bond calculator must be valid.

The next field of the savings bond calculator is how often you want to invest the periodic investment amount you chose in the previous field. You have a choice of investing weekly, bi-weekly or less often. Some people invest monthly whereas some only invest semi-annually or just once a year. Choose from the drop down menu of the savings bond calculator.

The number of years you plan to invest your money in US savings bonds is important in calculating the value of your investment using the savings bond calculator. The longer the number of years, the more your investment will grow. Bear in mind, though, that most US savings bonds pay interests for 30 years. After 30 years, your money will no longer grow and you should think about moving your investment elsewhere.

The last thing the savings bond calculator will ask you to input is the tax rate. This field in the savings bond calculator is the federal tax rate which you expect your earnings to be taxed by the IRS.

With all of the information above, you can easily use the free savings bond calculator. You can use it as often as you like, and the more you use the savings bond calculator, the more you will learn about your savings bond investment.

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