Quote Originally Posted by SPOOLIN
so you can go to etrade or scotttrade and sign up and take 500$ and shove it somewhere? Ive thought about it but never knew where to truely start with doing it.
Yes, Basically that's it. I had to go to my nearest branch with a check but I think they have it now where you can have it debited from your checking account without having to go into a branch but as it was said above, it takes a few days for your money to show up in the account, ,then you can start trading.

I currently have about $50 worth of stock in Scottrade account cause I just moved into my house not to long ago and cashed most of it out, but after the initial $500 deposit, you don't have to always carry a $500 balance. After the initial, you can go down to a Zero balance or anything above that. The $500 is just to initiate the account. It's really easy.