i trade through the broker i work at. it's a phone discount broker, so the rates aren't as good as say online trading through commsec, but they aren't bad by any means.
i keep my money in a money-market account at bankwest which i get about 5% interest on and all trades settle on t+3 through this account (options same day).
i have a few stocks which i hold, like mms and tls (well, i sold them yesterday, but i held them for about 6 months) and a couple of specs on some smaller stocks as well. i also subscribe to a share valuation/report service.
i also like to trade options, mostly buying calls when i think stocks that i already believe are undervalued become oversold in a 10 day period. so with some help from the service i subscribe to as well as some of my own calculations, i find the 5 most undervalued stocks, and wait for some of my indicators to show they are likely to bounce. it has a really good success rate, though as with most tech analysis you are vulnerable to everything you can't measure in your parameters (considering some days it feels like the market is trading off the news ticker).