Online trading is a fairly popular method of transacting in financial products online. Brokers have gone online, with their platforms providing all kinds of financial instruments like stocks, commodities, bonds, ETFS, and futures.

• Traditionally, when a buyer wanted to invest money in stocks, he used to call his brokerage firm and asked for putting in a request to buy stocks of a given company for a specified amount.
• The broker would then let him know the market price of the stocks and would confirm the order.
• After the user confirmed his trading account, the broker's fees and the time period required for the order, the order would get placed on the stock exchange.

As is obvious, this method had multiple steps and was pretty long drawn. Not surprisingly, online trading platforms have taken over the entire trading landscape because of their advantages:

• The users can open, manage and close accounts sitting at their homes, working on a device with internet.
• Transactions can be made much more easily.
• Multiple financial products, which earlier needed to be bought from specific places or banks, can now be bought and sold online, which also reduces the the role of an intermediary and saves time.
• The money used is real and the user gets to analyse and choose from the various options of stocks and products available.