Principal features of many online brokerage accounts include: online trades (with an associated fee, and sometimes including a certain number of free trades), over-the-phone trades, broker-assisted trades, automatic investments, various types of accounts with either no or low minimum investment (including brokerage cash accounts, brokerage margin accounts, and retirement accounts), online trading and banking, mobile trading, access to foreign exchange trading, options trading, mutual funds trading, dividend reinvestment plans, local offices to assist you, and many tools/research and information at your disposal.