Steps/Procedures to open an online stock trading account in the US
Since you are not starting with a lot of cash the commissions may eat into your account. So go with somebody that has no inactivity fee and low/free commission. I think there are number of sites and the ING sharebuilder.com comes to mind. Scottrade also one of the cheaper ones that i used.
First you will need a plan stating three main points: You will have to decide what criteria you will use to answer these points. You might use Fundamental Analysis to find what to buy and Technical Analysis to decide when to buy and when to sell (your buy and sell triggers). Once you have a Trading Plan in place you would need to find a broker with conditional orders. You can place conditional buy orders to get in a trade (for example if the price moves above or below a target price). You can place conditional stop loss orders if your trade goes against you, and you can also place conditional profit target stops to automatically get out if rises to your desired profit target. You can place one, two or many conditional orders after hours which will enable you to trade without being in front of your screen all day long. Now a days, your stocks can be seen virtually through a brokerage account. Back in the days, a stock certificate was the only way to authenticate stock ownership. You can still request them though from the corporation you have shares in or your brokerage. It will have your name, corporation name and number of shares you have. You have to buy shares of a stock either through a brokerage or the corporation itself. Most stock brokerages are legit and are FDIC or SIPC insured. But your risks are your own loses. The $10 you are referring to is the trade commission fee the brokerage charges. When you place an order to buy or sell a stock the brokerage will charge you $10. So for example if you bought 1 share of a $20 stock. The total transaction cost will be $30. Depending on the state you live in, you can basically starting trading stocks at either 18 or 21. You can donate/gift your shares to virtually anyone. When you sell a stock and experience a profit, you will be charged a capital gains tax. If you buy a stock and sell it for a gain within 1 year, you will taxed up to 35% or your tax bracket but if you hold it for more than a year, you will taxed only 15% or your tax bracket. Before you decide on moving into trading, whether you have experience or not, you need to sort out a couple of questions. How much do you really understand about the markets ?  How much money you have and what would be the maximum loss you may be able to take ?  What supporting Eco-system you have to help you in terms of trading i.e. hardware, software, research, connections who can provide you with solid information and sorts of it ? Are you really prepared to take on institutions who have billions to spend and take losses i.e. amounts which might break you will be peanuts for them ? I am assuming you are in US, so this website  may help you a bit, trading websites where you can open an account.  Even if you reply in affirmative to the above questions, you should still be wary about making money by trading. It is a field where even the best people have been smacked in the face without any mercy. And above all don't expect any person will take mercy on your hard earned cash. They will take you to the cleaners if they have to. There are some websites which allow you to participate in trading, not involving real money. Try that out and see where you get to ? That should give you some pointers on where you are headed.  And realize that it is human nature to assume, when you hear news that such and such trader make loads of money in such and such trades, trading is easy, unless you do it for yourself. The truth is such traders would be on their desk for 18-20 hours at a stretch, 6-7 days a week, without a life to make such money. And they have loads of support staff i.e. analysts, IT guys who makes it easier for them. Do you have such help ? If no, then look the other side.  But giving up without trying at all will be cowardly, but do it in limits which you can bear and not to get carried away when things are good. They will not open an account if you come in wanting to open an account for a third party. Your sister will have to do it herself. Assuming she has a SSN and credit history to verify her identity, she'll easily be able to do it online, and use whatever address she wants to send mail to (she can have separate mailing and residence addresses). There are also Israeli institutions who provide investment accounts to Israelis with ability to trade in the US. That might be easier for her than having an account in the US and filing tax returns in Israel every year. Unless she evades taxes in Israel, that is... The lowest cost way to trade on an exchange is to trade directly on the exchange. I can't speak to the LSE, but in the US, there is a mandated firewall between the individual and the exchange, the broker; therefore, in the US, one would have to start a business and become a broker. If that process is too costly, the broker or trade platform that permits individuals to trade with the lowest commissions is the next lowest. You must understand that: So, if you -- the prospective buyer -- are in Waukegan, do you take the train all the way to New York City just to buy 100 shares of stock?  No.  That would be absurdly expensive.  So, you hire an agent in NYC who will broker a deal for you in the exchange. Fast forward 100 years, to the time when instant communications is available.  Why do we now still need brokerages, when the Exchanges could set up web sites and let you do the trading? The answer is that the Exchanges don't want to have to develop the accounting systems to manage the transactions of hundreds of thousands of small traders, when existing brokerage firms already have those computerized processes in place and are opening their own web sites. Thus, in 2017 we have brokerage firms because of history. In short: yes, as long as you have Internet access. See, for example this question or this one about opening a brokerage account from outside the US.  Your sister could even open an account here in the US and provide you with access. However, I'm guessing you're not a registered or even formally trained financial advisor and if you make bets with her money that don't work out well, she could get pretty upset with you.   You might consider doing research from Bangladesh on good financial advisors and picking one (or a few) to recommend she go see in the US.  EDIT: OP hopes to be a financial advisor in the future. Given that comment, I'd recommend looking into becoming a Certified Financial Planner (unless CFA suits your goals; you indicated that process is already underway), as a step towards that goal.  Information about the certification in the US is here, in India here, and in some other countries here. I traded futures for a brief period in school using the BrokersXpress platform (now part of OptionsXpress, which is in turn now part of Charles Schwab). They had a virtual trading platform, and apparently still do, and it was excellent. Since my main account was enabled for futures, this carried over to the virtual account, so I could trade a whole range of futures, options, stocks, etc. I spoke with OptionsXpress, and you don't need to fund your acount to use the virtual trading platform. However, they will cancel your account after an arbitrary period of time if you don't log in every few days. According to their customer service, there is no inactivity fee on your main account if you don't fund it and make no trades. I also used Stock-Trak for a class and despite finding the occasional bug or website performance issue, it provided a good experience. I received a discount because I used it through an educational institution, and customer service was quite good (probably for the same reason), but I don't know if those same benefits would apply to an individual signing up for it.  I signed up for top10traders about seven years ago when I was in secondary school, and it's completely free. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and the interface was poorly designed and slow. Furthermore, at that time, there were no restrictions that limited the number of shares you could buy to the number of outstanding shares, so you could buy as many as you could afford, even if you exceeded the number that physically existed. While this isn't an issue for large companies, it meant you could earn a killing trading highly illiquid pink sheet stocks because you could purchase billions of shares of companies with only a few thousand shares actually outstanding. I don't know if these issues have been corrected or not, but at the time, I and several other users took advantage of these oversights to rack up hundreds of trillions of dollars in a matter of days, so if you want a realistic simulation, this isn't it.  Investopedia also has a stock simulator that I've heard positive things about, although I haven't used it personally. As a relatively recent nonimmigrant visa holder (O1), I was able to open an ETrade brokerage account without problems. I have full tax residence in the USA so have an SSN, and a credit history so it was no problem.  Later, as a greencard holder, I opened IRA accounts with them, too. Again, there were no issues as I had all the information that the IRS paperwork required at hand. "Being ""long"" - expecting the price to go up to make a profit - is a two step process:  1) buy 2) sell Being ""short"" - expecting the price to go down to make a profit - is a 5 step process:  1) borrow someone else's asset 2) sell their asset on the open market to somebody else a third party 3) pocket the proceeds of the sell for your own account 4) buy an identical asset for a cheaper price 5) return this identical asset to the person that let you borrow their asset if this is successful you keep the difference between 3) and 4)" It's done by Opening Auction (http://www.advfn.com/Help/the-opening-auction-68.html): The Opening Auction Between 07.50 and   a random time between 08.00 and   08.00.30, there will be called an auction period during which time,   limit and market orders are entered   and deleted on the order book. No   order execution takes place during   this period so it is possible that the   order book will become crossed. This   means that some buy and sell orders   may be at the same price and some buy   orders may be at higher prices than   some sell orders. At the end of the random start period,   the order book is frozen temporarily   and an order matching algorithm is   run. This calculates the price at   which the maximum volume of shares in   each security can be traded. All   orders that can be executed at this   price will be filled automatically,   subject to price and priorities. No   additional orders can be added or   deleted until the auction matching   process has been completed. The opening price for each stock will   be either a 'UT' price or, in the   event that there are no transactions   resulting form the auction, then the   first 'AT' trade will be used. "Don't do it until you have educated yourself enough to know what you are doing. I hope you won't take this personally, but given that you are wandering around asking random strangers on the Internet how to ""get into investing,"" I feel safe in concluding that you are by no means a sophisticated enough investor to be choosing individual investments, nor should you be trusting financial advisors to choose investments for you. Believe me, they do not have your interests at heart. I usually advise people in your position to start by reading one book: A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel. Once you've read the book by Malkiel you'll understand that the best strategy for all but the most sophisticated investors is to buy an index fund, which simply purchases a portfolio of ALL available stocks without trying to pick winners and losers. The best index funds are at Vanguard (there is also a Vanguard site for non-US residents). Vanguard is one of the very, very, very few honest players in the business. Unlike almost any other mutual fund, Vanguard is owned by its investors, so it has no profit motive. They never try to pick individual stocks, so they don't have to pay fancy high-priced analysts to pick stocks. If you find it impossible to open a Vanguard account from wherever you're living, find a local brokerage account that will allow you to invest in the US stock market. Many Vanguard mutual funds are available as ETFs which means that you buy and sell them just like any other stock on the US market, which should be easy to do from any reasonably civilized place." I personally am from Canada and use my local bank to trade stocks. Contact your local bank and they will tell you how to do it, since rules depend on country of residency. If you are not close to a bank, e-mail the major bank in the country of your residence. The LLC portion is completely irrelevant. Don't know why you want it. You can create a joint/partnership trading account without the additional complexity of having LLC. What liability are you trying to limit here? Her sisters will file tax returns in the us using the form 1040NR, and only reporting the dividends they received, everything else will be taxed by Vietnam. You'll have to investigate how to file tax returns there as well. That said, you'll need about $500,000 each to invest in the regional centers. So you're talking about 1.5 million of US dollars at least. From a couple of $14K gifts to $1.5M just by trading? I don't see how this is feasible. You actually don't have to open a business account with your bank, you can have a personal account with the bank and have your business funds go into it, whether it be from cheques or from Eftpos\Credit Card Facilities. You just have to get your customers to make the cheque out under your name (the same name used for your bank account). If you are trading as a sole trader and you trade under a name other than your own name, then officially you are supposed to register that name with Fair Trading in your state. However, if you are trading using another name and it is not registered, Fair Trading will only become aware of it if someone (usually one of your customers) makes a compliant about you, and they will then ask you to either stop using that name as your trading name or have it registered (if not already registered by someone else).