Before you can start investing and trading your money, you will need to open a brokerage account.  Once you place a trade order, the broker will execute that trade for you. There are many sites that will be competing for your business, so do your research.  Some of the factors to consider are the following:

Are there any promotional deals that are being offered?

What is the minimum investment-$500? 2,500?

Does it provide real education (remember abundance of information is not what you are looking for, you are looking for information that you can use to base your trading on).

What other features do the brokers provide? Brokers are constantly updating features to the latest technology. For example, some provide alerts on SMS and other only provide alerts on email.

What are the commission fees for options? (Typically range from $5-$10 per trade). Commission fees due add up but focus on what you are getting with each broker. Among many features, some less reputable brokers have higher slippage.  For example, when you put a market order (order at current price), some broker will buy a security at $47.20 others may buy at $47.24, this $.04 difference (slippage) times the amount of shares you are purchasing could make a big difference.

Some brokerage accounts are geared towards advance traders, that provide little hand holding, little support but their price is reasonable and vice versa.

APP functionality (download their app and play with it).

Below are few worth considering. These have earned the highest marks, however new ones make the list all the time so do you own research as well.

• Ally
• Merrill Lynch
• TD Ameritrade
• E-trade
• Charles Schwab
• Robinhood