Just try Scottrade. If your dad has an account for stock trading, use his for now. If you're using your own money, then transfer that money to his bank account and make him allow you to use his balance on the trading account. Once you feel like you built up enough or lost too much, you should stop using his account and create an independent one.
Scottrade has a pretty good reputation for newbies.
I use the Ninja Trader Platform and trade futures contracts on the Dow, S&P, and the Russell. You need to learn all you can before you ever risk real money trading futures. Read books and study Technical Analysis. Practice trading the live market with a demo account first, most brokers will let you do this as long as you need to. The broker is who sets your commission. You should be able to get round trip commissions for around 5 bucks each. The more trades you make the less your commission. They will negotiate with you on that.
More than likely you'll lose money buying & selling individual stocks & playing with futures, commodities, & options. The best & most sure way to build money (and a lot of it) is slow & steady over time.
Here's what I'd do. Use yahoo finance, or seeking alpha. Make your best portfolio (with no money invested), look at all the info you can about your companies, and make paper (fake) trades. Pretend and learn. It costs you nada.
I am a soon to be 18 year old looking to get started buying and selling stocks and trading futures. My philosophy is, I should start young to gain as much knowledge as I can. I already know a lot about the stock market and it's workings.
That being said
What is a good trading platform for beginners, that provides low commission, and little or no account minimum
Thank you
