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Thanks to the internet, stock trading is no longer just the domain of investment professionals. Now, anyone with a computer or mobile device has the opportunity to make money trading stocks. An increasing number of people are turning to stock trading as a way to supplement their income, while those who are the most committed to acquiring the requisite knowledge can do quite well financially.
While it isn't exactly rocket science, the learning curve for becoming a successful stock trader can be very steep, especially for those just getting started. It's possible to learn stock trading theory by reading a book, but gaining the practical knowledge, skills, and confidence to trade with your own money requires more extensive training with real-time support. That's what a quality, online stock trading course can offer.
This roundup aims to help those interested in becoming savvy stock traders understand what a quality stock trading course can offer and identify the best courses in 6 different categories.
Investopedia offers its own stock trading class as part of the Investopedia Academy, but to maintain objectivity, we opted to exclude it from this roundup. If you are interested in this course, please visit the Investopedia Academy.
Investors Underground
Investors Underground has the most complete offering by far, with a clear educational path at a fairly reasonable price, making it our choice as the best overall stock trading course.
Highly regarded learning platform
Well established with a solid reputation
Large and active chat room
Access to mentors, including the founder
Substantial discounts for quarterly and annual subscription plans
Pricing is on the high end
Trading courses sold separately from the primary subscription for $1,000
By industry standards, Investors Underground (IU) might be considered the elder among its peers. IU was initially established in 2004 under the name Investors Live by world-class trader and educator Nathan Michaud. It was rebranded as Investors Underground in 2008. Since then, IU has evolved to become the most complete provider of stock trading educational courses and resources, all while keeping its prices competitive. That's why we chose IU as the best overall stock trading course provider.
Investors Underground started as a chat room where traders could exchange notes and ideas throughout the day. Since then, IU's trading community has grown to become one of the largest and most active, which is a testament to the quality of its offering. Along the way, IU has expanded its menu to include one of the best lineups of stock trading training packages available.
IU's Textbook Trading course was one of the first of its kind to be offered to those with only basic knowledge of trading. It's an 8-hour course covering everything a novice needs to know to get started with stock trading. Although it starts out with the basics, it quickly elevates the learning to more advanced topics, including the application of trading tools and actionable trading setups.
From there, students move right into the Tandem Trader, a 12-hour advanced day trading course. What's unique about this course is that in addition to the standard educational content used in advanced classes, Tandem Trader includes screenshots of live trades made by Michaud along with his tick-by-tick commentary, providing students with the feel of trading right alongside a top trader. It's one thing to learn trading theory; it's entirely different to see trading setups play out in real time.
It's recommended that you take advantage of IU's free Beginner's Day Trading Guide before shelling out a membership fee. The free Guide includes 8 video lessons, each 20-45 minutes in length, hosted by IU team manager and momentum trader Cam who joined the program as a subscriber in 2010, and it provides an introduction to basic trading topics like day trading, short selling, and stock brokers.
Paid membership is available for a monthly, quarterly, or annual commitment, and the trading courses are sold separately. Adding trading courses to the monthly subscription ($297 per month) or quarterly subscription ($697 per quarter) will cost you an additional $1,000. And with an annual subscription ($1,897 annually), IU's trading courses will only cost $800, for a total investment of $2,697 in your first year of Investors Underground. The yearly subscription is the best value for up-and-coming traders who want to learn and practice at their own pace.
Your membership also includes monthly webinars along with access to a live trading floor, daily video recap, nightly watch list, the morning call, and more than 1,000 video lessons. IU also has a massive Trading Encyclopedia with pages and pages of content on trading basics free of charge.
Udemy
Udemy offers a wide range of beginner stock trading courses at remarkably low prices, making it our choice as the best online stock trading course for newbies.
Low prices
Comprehensive courses
Extensive course selection
No opportunity for practical application
No chat rooms
No coaching
Udemy is a leading global provider of online courses covering a wide range of investing topics. For those who want to wade into the shallow end of stock trading waters, Udemy offers comprehensive beginner stock trading courses. Their low prices make Udemy an attractive choice for newbies who want to see if stock trading is for them.
For those brand new to stock investing, Udemy offers Stock Market from Scratch for Complete Beginners. Priced regularly at $110, the course includes 6 sections with 57 lectures for a total of 6.5 hours of instruction.
With that foundation of knowledge, you can move up to The Complete Foundation Stock Trading Course, available for $180. The course takes you further up the learning curve to better understand how the stock market works, how orders are placed, risk management, and an introduction to chart analysis.
Then, for a deeper dive into stock trading, you could take the Complete Day Trading Course, which focuses on the skill of technical analysis. Students learn how to trade more than 16 chart patterns and understand performance indicators. For $130, you receive 10 hours of on-demand video, 11 downloadable resources, and full lifetime access.
All courses are taught using pre-recorded video lessons that include expert instruction with demonstrations of trading techniques. The downside of Udemy's courses is there are no opportunities for practical application.
Warrior Trading
Whether you are a newbie who doesn't know where to start or an active day trader trying to get to the next level, Warrior Trading's offerings can take you there, making it our choice as the best comprehensive course offering.
Soup-to-nuts training at every stage of trading experience
Extensive educational resources
Access to real-time trading simulator
Large and active chat room
Group mentoring
Free training courses
On the expensive side
Regardless of your stock trading experience level, Warrior Trading offers an investment research and educational platform to suit your needs, which is why it makes our list as the best comprehensive offering.
With an active following of more than 930,000 subscribers, Warrior Trading has earned a solid reputation in the stock trading field. At the core of its educational offerings is its extensive resources, including structured online courses, webinars, stock market simulators, group mentoring, and chat room access to a large community of traders.
For $997 per month, beginner investors can get the Warrior Starter program with a systematic and self-paced approach to learning how to trade. The course includes 15 chapters of foundational content, one-month access to the live trading chat rooms, and a real-time trading simulator to sharpen your skills in a practice setting. Continued monthly access to the chat rooms and simulator requires a membership starting at $197 per month. This package is ideal for budget-minded novices who want to get a quick leg up on understanding the markets, how trading accounts work, fundamental and technical analysis, and the psychology of trading.
The Warrior Pro package is a more extensive course offering that caters to stock traders at any level. It includes the core learning resources from the Starter package and adds a range of more advanced training courses, including various day trading courses, a swing trading course, options trading course, and cryptocurrency trading course. In addition to access to the simulator and chat room, the Warrior Pro package also offers live group mentoring sessions.
The 90-day course is offered at $1,497 per month for three months, with ongoing membership costing $197 per month after that.
Warrior Trading also offers free training sessions that can give you a taste of educational capacity. These have included strategies for reducing risk, finding the right stocks to trade, and building a trading strategy for any market. The website also provides access to a dozen free guides on various trading techniques.
TD Ameritrade
Offering a massive range of topics from investing basics to trading strategy guides, the investing and trading library from TD Ameritrade is useful for beginners and seasoned stock traders alike—and it's free, making it our choice as the best free option for stock trading courses.
Offered by a renowned stock brokerage firm
Vast library of content
Offered in a variety of interactive platforms
No coaching or interaction with other traders
TD Ameritrade has been a dominant player in the self-directed trading space for decades, and it has always made investor education a cornerstone of its offering. Whether you are a newbie to stock trading or an advanced trader, TD Ameritrade's vast library of videos, education guides, tutorials, and webinars can help you get to the next level—free of charge. That's why TD Ameritrade is our choice as the best free option for stock trading courses.
While you do need to open a TD Ameritrade account to access its education center, you are not required to make a minimum investment. What's nice about that is, when you feel you've consumed enough knowledge, your trading account is set up and ready to go. Because TD Ameritrade doesn't charge commissions on trades, you can start out as small as you want.
When you log into your account, you have access to the entire education center. In addition to the guides, videos, and tutorials, the library includes fun animations, vocabulary dictionaries, and quizzes. Many of the courses are paired with webcasts and other educational events, including live classroom instruction at a local TD Ameritrade office. Most of the educational content is also available on a mobile app.
Course selection ranges from the basics, such as Simple Steps for a Retirement Portfolio, to advanced topics, such as Options for Volatility.
While you do have access to an education coach, that person only engages with you to provide direction on which courses you should pursue. There's no coaching on stock trading techniques or a live chat room.
Bear Bull Traders
The Bear Bull Traders learning platform is as extensive as you'll find and offered at very reasonable prices, making it our choice as the best value for a stock trading course.
Extensive library of videos and high-level trading tutorials
Access to professional trading simulator
Helpful trader community with support from chat room monitors
Designated chat rooms for various forms of trading
Affordable tiered pricing structure
Webinars are only available to annual subscribers
7-day trial membership is not free
There are less expensive stock trading courses available, but if you want to ensure you have access to all the learning resources you'll need to succeed, you'll pay just a little bit more. That's why Bear Bull Traders makes our list as the best value for stock trading courses.
The youngest course provider on our list, Bear Bull Traders was founded in 2016 by well-known author and day trader Andrew Aziz. Still, the Bear Bull Traders online community has become one of the more popular for active day traders. Besides its vast library of educational resources that includes an extensive video library, webinars, and downloadable resources, Bear Bull Traders provides members ongoing support through member meetups and its crew of chat room monitors. Members can access the trade simulator during a 14-day free trial—and pay $100 per month after that—to enable them to hone their skills with paper trading before going live with their own money at stake.
The best learning experiences a stock trading course can offer are through chat rooms and active discussion forums. Bear Bull Traders has designated chat rooms for day trading, swing trading, options, forex, and trading psychology.
More importantly, members have access to an experienced mentor, including founder Andrew Aziz.
Bear Bull Traders offers a 2-tiered membership, Basic or Elite. Both the Basic plan ($99 per month) and Elite plan ($199 per month) are cancellable at any time. If you're ready for a longer commitment, you can save by purchasing an Elite Annual subscription for a yearly payment of $1,999, and you manually renew each year. Basic membership gets you access to the live chat rooms and the basic lessons, while the Elite membership is the Basic package plus webinars, mentorship, and access to trading psychology team. BBT also offers a 7-day trial membership for $39.
Bull on Wall Street
Bulls on Wall Street's live training boot camp is unique in the industry. It offers personalized support for members, making it the best stock trading course for live training.
Established company with a solid reputation
Live instruction during 60-day boot camp
Personalized training
Access to trading simulator with mentor feedback
Reasonably priced subscription options
No trial membership available
Established in 2008, Bulls on Wall Street is one of the more established stock trading course providers. Its founder, Kunal Desai, has been an active day trader since 1999. Desai intended to make this trading course a more personalized experience for members, and the Live 60-Day Boot Camp has become the cornerstone of his offering. That’s why Bulls on Wall Street makes our list as the best stock trading course for live training.
The live boot camp classes are held online three nights a week, and they are taught by Desai himself. The objective of the course is to provide practical experience through remote group exercises and individual assignments. During the classes, Desai demonstrates trade techniques and strategies by executing actual trades in real time, providing detailed explanations along the way.
For the following 40 days, students gather online to discuss actual market activity and apply their newly learned trading concepts. Meanwhile, students have access to a trading simulator to put their training into practice. Mentors then review students' simulated trades and provide feedback and advice. Students are quizzed along the way to check their progress.
Bulls on Wall Street also offers the Bulls Vision monthly plan for $199 per month. That covers the cost of more than 20 hours of live training, access to the Bulls Vision chat room featuring Kanal Desai's live cam feed, access to New Bulls Day Trading Room, a Sunday Market Huddle, live market recaps, and advanced platform tutorials.
Another option is the Bulls Vision Annual plan for $1,499, which offers significant savings and adds several bonuses, including a trading toolkit course book, live event access, and a personalized strategic account executive.
Any of the six stock trading classes reviewed here are worthy of consideration by traders of all levels of experience—from neophytes to advanced. The reasons for choosing one over another are based on individual circumstances, budget, learning preferences, and the level of commitment one wants to make to the endeavor of learning to trade stocks online.
Not entirely sure online stock trading is for you but want to learn more? A low-cost option from Udemy or the no-cost option available at TD Ameritrade is your best choice.
If you've decided you want to commit to learning to trade stocks and want the best bang for your buck, Bear Bull Traders is your best bet.
For those of you willing to pay a little bit more to ensure you have access to the most comprehensive offering of courses and resources through each stage of learning—beginner to advanced—then Warrior Trading has what you need.
If you want the very best overall offering and are willing to pay a bit more for the privilege, Investor Underground checks all the boxes and then some.
With the proliferation of self-directed trading platforms, such as TD Ameritrade, Schwab, Fidelity, Robinhood, and many others, online stock trading courses have grown proportionately. The providers of stock trading courses typically offer a full range of educational and research capabilities to help novice traders develop their skills and knowledge while enabling more advanced traders to up their game.
Many of the top stock trading courses offer structured courses with either video or online instruction. A significant learning component for these courses is the chat rooms, which provide all students and members with access to a large community of traders to exchange ideas. These chat rooms are typically moderated or attended by expert traders who offer their input. The best courses also provide opportunities for practical application through trading simulators that mimic a real trading environment using fake money.
Anyone interested in making money in the stock market could benefit from a stock trading class. While it's possible to learn the ins and outs of stock trading on your own—through books, videos, and podcasts available online—a good stock trading course provides a more structured learning path with the opportunity to interact with expert traders and apply your skills and knowledge without risking your own money. These courses can also help develop discipline and the proper trading mindset, which are critical to successful trading.
Learning how to trade stocks doesn't have to cost a fortune. In fact, you have access to plenty of free training and resources through some of the top online brokerage companies, such as TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, and Schwab. From there, the cost depends on what you expect to get out of the class. If you just want theory and a thorough explanation of the methodology and strategies, you can pay as little as $110 for a comprehensive video course.
If you want a deeper immersion into the art and science of trading, you might pay between $100 and $300 per month for a subscription to course materials, webinars, and chat room access. For more hands-on training or mentoring, you could easily pay as much as $300 to $500 per month. At those prices, you have to consider what return on investment a course could produce through increased monthly earnings.
That depends on the individual. If you can commit 100% to a good stock trading course, you should be able to get up and running within a few weeks of starting the course. If you're learning in your spare time, you should expect to commit at least 40 hours to structured learning, which you might have to spread over a couple of months. The keys are to learn at a comfortable pace and to use a stock trading course that provides constant feedback on your learning progress. That usually happens when using a professional trading simulator.
The good news is there is a wide selection of stock trading courses, numbering in the dozens. The bad news is the quality of these courses can vary widely, even though they all might show well through their websites.
We reviewed 15 of the most trusted platforms and compared them against a specific set of criteria to choose the best stock trading courses. In addition to the types of classes they offer, we considered such factors as cost, access to instructors or mentors, access to a trading community, the extent of learning resources, availability of free courses or materials, and any unique features that added value to the services.
Better Business Bureau. "Warrior Trading." Accessed Oct. 15, 2021.
Corporate Finance Institute. “The Winning Mindset of a Trader.” Accessed Dec. 22, 2021.
