richardycc
Diamond Member
- Apr 29, 2001
- 5,719
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anyone playing Mannkind? rumor has it that AstraZeneca might buy them out...this is assuming FDA will approve Afrezza on 4/15?
Look up "Limit order".So there's all this news about high-frequency traders "rigging the market," and I'm a relatively new investor. I purchased a few mutual funds years ago, but now I want to try buying a few individual stocks. A few days ago, I tried to buy a few shares of Gilead at like $70/share, but when I got the confirmation a few days later, it actually bought at like $73/share. wtf! I tried to look up "bid price" "ask price" and "sell price," but didn't really understand it. I thought it took only a few seconds to execute the trade. Is this the effect of the high-frequency traders? Where they drive up the price right before your bid gets accepted? Sorry for the ignorance, but we all gotta start somewhere.
Look up "Limit order".
So there's all this news about high-frequency traders "rigging the market," and I'm a relatively new investor. I purchased a few mutual funds years ago, but now I want to try buying a few individual stocks. A few days ago, I tried to buy a few shares of Gilead at like $70/share, but when I got the confirmation a few days later, it actually bought at like $73/share. wtf! I tried to look up "bid price" "ask price" and "sell price," but didn't really understand it. I thought it took only a few seconds to execute the trade. Is this the effect of the high-frequency traders? Where they drive up the price right before your bid gets accepted? Sorry for the ignorance, but we all gotta start somewhere.
Jesus. Now that I'm reading on this, it seems so elementary. Kinda embarrassing that I didn't even know about it. Thanks guys.
What other 1st grade advice can you give me before I buy my next stock.
...
Btw, HFT front running only deals in pennies. Brokers that deal in millions of shares are more affected than a typical mom/pop transaction.
Jesus. Now that I'm reading on this, it seems so elementary. Kinda embarrassing that I didn't even know about it. Thanks guys.
What other 1st grade advice can you give me before I buy my next stock.
Other basic advice is to never (at least most of us never use it anyways) open a Margin account. Always have it as a CASH account.
If you currently have a Margin account because you naively clicked the "Yes" to Margin Acct. box when opening a brokerage account, quickly call your brokerage and ask them to change it back to a CASH account.
The reason for this is that under bankruptcy law, if your account was tagged "Margin" (even if you never used it), your money is entangled with the bank's money. For crissakes, imagine being mixed up with Bear Stearns or Lehman Bros. failings.
By having a CASH account, your account remains separate from the bank's bankruptcy. No creditors can come after your money in an effort to get some of the bank's money from the liquidation.
http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20582
.....BTW, it's also good to have your money in different banks/pots just in case one of them ends up in a clusterfuck Murphy's Law scenario...
Can someone point me in the direction of dividend investing.
My question is how much money do you need to make it work it?
For example, I just did a test scenario of using 10,000 dollars spread across 5 companies (2,000) each and my dividends came out to 435 bucks.
The companies I picked are
CM ($58) 35 Shares, QTR Div Rate .87 = $121.8
JNJ ($96.54) 21 Shares, QTR Div Rate .66 = $55.44
F ($15.63) 130 Shares, QTR Div Rate .12 = $65
IRT ($8.89) 225 Shares, MTH Div Rate .06 = $162
SCC ($30) 65 Shares, QTR Div Rate .12 = 31.2
Doesn't seem like much. Need more money to make more money.....
What company do you use to do your stocks? My company suggested E-trade but are there any others that you would recommend?