EDUCATION NORTH CAROLINA
While each broker will have different rates, most charge a flat fee per trade. These flat fees make it much easier to see a return on your investment much sooner than you would with a variable rate. This also means that, if you are starting with a fairly large investment of perhaps $10,000, and the brokers trading fee was a $100 flat rate per trade, you would only have to see a one percent return to break even. Of course the reverse is also true, in that if you are starting with a smaller investment of only $1000 or so, you would have to see at least a ten percent return to do the same.
Your rate of return will also depend on whether you are investing in a short term or long term system. In a short term system, you will have many more trading fees, since it is based on the buy low, sell high, do it now philosophy. With a long term system, however, you will incur far fewer trading fees due to the fact that with a long term investment, you are investing in the future viability of a company, rather than in an immediate merger or other change.