The most important part of the technological support involves providing fast execution of trading orders and research data to the stock traders.

If you do an intensive and enlightened research on the internet, you may come across brokerage firms that provide the latest customizable state-of-the- art technological support services to all kinds of customers, whether beginners, frequent traders, day traders, institutional traders or automated traders.

The investor service oriented brokerage firms use latest technological services and trading platforms that facilitate very fast transmission of orders and messages. The procedure is so programmed that the orders are executed directly without going through the extra servers. An expeditious execution of orders spares the customers all the hassles that are generated by the slow speed servers.

Quite often the traders have to suffer losses due to change in prices occurring because of the slow execution of the orders. At times the orders are not executed as desired by the traders. Those customers who have high frequency trading benefit most from such advanced technology.

Although these brokerage firms offer fast order execution technology, they charge very low commission rates. Their services provide tremendous benefits to the active day traders. They offer as low cost commission fees as $3 -$1 per trade and bridge the gap between the Wall Street traders and the Main Street consumers. Their advanced and powerful technology offers the average customer the same ease of use, speed of execution at affordable rates that are usually offered to the advanced professional and institutional investors.

Some brokerage firms have direct point-to-point fiber-optic connections with all the major exchanges and state-of-the-art servers. Therefore they can handle the highest volumes of quotation and order data and transact millions of shares each day.

They offer automatic daily investments, dollar cost averaging and real-time trading at the same low price.

Imagine a situation, where you place a buy or sell order and start waiting for its execution. The order page refuses to change, while you keep on pounding upon your computer keys in desperation. In the meantime, the price of your stock has either risen or fallen to your utter disadvantage.

The second part of the services consists of the customer support system.

As an intelligent and sophisticated stock trader you should ensure that your stock broker provides you with a friendly and customized service. It should be his highest priority to provide a dedicated support team to assist the customers in placing their orders, processing their funds transfers and navigating through their website.

Their telephone menus have to be brief and simple to handle. The customer support staff should be alert enough to pick the telephone calls within seconds and should not keep the customers waiting since their time is very precious. They should respond to your telephone and email messages within as soon as possible. The customer support service should be knowledgeable, prompt and courteous. The customers should be clearly notified the timings when they can contact the support services representatives.

An online chat facility is another essential customer support feature of a good brokerage firm. You should ensure that you get prompt response from your broker through an online live chat system.

You entrust a huge amount of money and vital financial information to your broker. You give them your bank account details and you send them important financial messages regarding the deposit and transfer of funds. With the proliferation of the incidents of hacking and phasing, fraud and forgery, you always remain vulnerable to unscrupulous elements. You should, therefore, ensure that your broker provides a secure means of transmitting your account messages. Any leakage of important information may jeopardize your financial security.

The customer support services also include investment advice to the investors both on short term and long-term basis. They should pay sufficient attention to the problems faced by the beginners in stock trading. In fact they should anticipate the frequently asked questions from the new investors and provide for their comprehensive answers. They should brief them about various investment plans such as scheduled investments, dollar based investments, fractional shares investments and dividend reinvestment plans. There are numerous long-term investment accounts such as Individual Retirement Account and Education Saving Account with their benefits, limitations along with their income tax implications.