How do I get started on investing through brokerages?

If you're looking to open a brokerage account and you need advice on what securities to start with, one way to do both is to open an advisor-assisted brokerage account with iFast Global Markets. With this account, you will be assigned an investment advisor who is licensed to advice you on what equities to invest in. In addition, you can monitor the amount of shares and face value of equities you invested.

If you're just starting out, I'd recommend that you go for a local index ETF first – i.e. STI ETF ES3 or G3B.

Not the most exciting of all, but just something to get the momentum started.

That'll form the first component of a basic long-term Boglehead 3-fund portfolio – local index ETF, local bond ETF and a global index ETF. In short, it's like chap chye peng. You own a bit of everything in the whole world.

As you get the hang of the platform you're using – UX, fees, etc. – you can then start reading up more on buying individual stocks.

Whatever brokerage you use will provide you with a monitoring tool, usually through the app.