Is Sharebuilder a good site for long term investment?

You can decide what company to invest through, I use Charles Schwab, but the most important thing is to decide on your goals. Do you intend to invest and then take out your money if the stock goes up? What if it starts to fall? Will you remove your money and take a loss or wait for a longer time? If you are going to invest for the future, it's better to pick solid companies or a good mutual fund and leave your money there for the long haul. Stocks will go up and down with no discernible reason. You need to look to more than three months. Track their performance back for several years. Get the prospectus--look up the company online. You can go ahead and invest your $1,000 and use the performance of these stocks to help you learn about the stock market. It's hard to beat the market by trading--you don't hear about day trading anymore because it wasn't the way to make quick money that people thought--some did well, most didn't. So, I think that finding out the cost of trades isn't the way to go, but you are young and can take more risks. Just pick companies in a market you expect to last. Good luck.