New to Investing

Planning your investment strategy

Jumping into the world of investing can be a little intimidating. We can help you plan your investment strategy with easy-to-use tools, objective third-party research and access to knowledgeable specialists.

Understanding the basics

Developing a personalized investment strategy that will help you pursue your goals means considering a number of choices. When starting out, it’s important to ask yourself some basic questions:

– What am I investing for?
– How involved will I be in managing assets?
– How much risk am I comfortable with?
– How quickly do I plan on using the funds?

By asking yourself these simple questions you’ll be able to start narrowing down all of the available choices and select the one that will help you pursue your goals.

Selecting an account type

Selecting the right account type depends on how you answered the question, “What am I investing for?” Are you planning your retirement, investing for college, or simply looking to get a return on your investment? Narrow your search by exploring our:

– Standard Accounts  Flexible and suited for a wide variety of trading and investing choices.

– Retirement Accounts  Designed specifically to help you prepare for retirement.

– Education Accounts  Designed to help you invest for higher education.

– Specialty Accounts  Covering wealth management, small business retirement, and more.

Selecting investment products

After assessing your situation, it’s time to look

Depending on your goals and the account type you select, you can incorporate a number of different investment products to help you reach your goals, diversify your portfolio, and mitigate risk. Learn about the different products we offer by exploring:

– Stocks

– Bonds & CDs

– Mutual Funds

– ETFs

– Options

– Futures

– Forex

If you have questions about our investment products or want to discuss whether or not a product may be appropriate for you, contact one of our specialists for help.

into available choices and then start investing. When weighing your options, consider:

– How involved you want to be in managing your assets.
– Whether there are any benefits to using your employer’s retirement plan.

Depending on your answers to these questions some products may be better suited to your needs. If you’re the do-it-yourself-type, our Mutual Fund Premier List, ETF Market Center, and research capabilities can help you decide between a traditional, Roth, or Rollover IRA. For help, contact one of our New Account Representatives.

Whichever option you select, utilizing features like automatic contributions to may help keep you and your investments on track.

Focusing on your goals

Once you’ve set your goals and selected the account type and investment products, it’s time to focus on developing and implementing a strategy. We offer a variety of third-party research resources to help you find and investigate potential investment ideas. And when you find a suitable fit, our intuitive trading platforms give you the power to act when the moment is right.

Maintaining your strategy

It’s important to evaluate and adjust your strategy regularly. The products you use and the percentage of your portfolio they comprise will change over time as a result of market conditions, investment performance, and other factors. If you’re managing your own investments, our tools & calculators, educational resources, and research capabilities can help you easily investigate and track market conditions, company performance, and other considerations. Additionally you can always talk to one of our knowledgeable specialists for support.