1.Advisory Service- Any firm that offer advice to the public as part of an advisory stock-broking service must be registered and authorised by the Financial Services Authortiy -FSA- The FSA is a government body that is set-up to ensure that financial companies comply with the many regulations that ensure a fair and fraud-free environment.

A company that offers an advisory service must ensure that any staff members that offer financial advice are adequately to do so. A list of companies that are FSA approved can be found on the FSA website www.fsa.gov.org.

Obviously, most stockbrokers will charge a fee for their advisory services. Typically, the stockbroker will discuss your investment aims and objective and then recommend a range of investment that they feel would best suit your needs.You can, of course, accept or reject their proposals. Advisory service tend to be done via the broker in person-either at their office, your home or over the telephone.

2.Discretionary Service- With a discretionary service, the stock-broking company will take a sum of money that you provide and invest this on your behalf. Its significantly different to an advisory service because the stockbroker does not have to tell the investor about every trade that is made on their behalf-the stockbroker has a lot of discretion on how to invest the clients money.

3Execution Only- As the name suggest, excution only trade are when the broker is instructed to buy or sell a particular investment. The broker has no say about the trade-even if they though the stock was going to drop by 90% tomorrow they are not obliged to say anything-. This is the type of service that hass recently been made available to the masses via online broerage houses that typically offer trades for $10 of so each. For more info-http://www.stockbrokers.info