Stocks...Anyone mess with them?

[Necrosaro420]

Ive been wanting to purchase stock's for several years now. And ive finally decided that Im going to do it. I have a few questions, where is a good place to purchase online? Im just looking to purchase stock's and maybe make a few buck's here and there reguardless of how long it takes. Like right now there are stock's that I want that are 5.90 each, and trying to find a place that I can purchase maybe like 5 every few weeks.

What do you all use? Is there lik ea minimum you can buy? I was looking on etrade, and it says like 9.99 flat fee on the trades. Is that per trade, or is that say if I buy 5, it's 9.99 for the lot?

Any information you have would help alot, Thanks!

 

[desk]

Originally posted by: Necrosaro420
Ive been wanting to purchase stock's for several years now. And ive finally decided that Im going to do it. I have a few questions, where is a good place to purchase online? Im just looking to purchase stock's and maybe make a few buck's here and there reguardless of how long it takes. Like right now there are stock's that I want that are 5.90 each, and trying to find a place that I can purchase maybe like 5 every few weeks.

What do you all use? Is there lik ea minimum you can buy? I was looking on etrade, and it says like 9.99 flat fee on the trades. Is that per trade, or is that say if I buy 5, it's 9.99 for the lot?

Any information you have would help alot, Thanks!

i use ameritrade and ameritrade izone. ameritrade charges 10.99 per trade and izone charges 5.00. but izone requires you to have $5000 in your account, where ameritrade only requires $2000.

a lot of atot'ers seem to like scottrade as well, but i dont know much about them.

9.99 flat fee means per trade, so you are going to pay 9.99 to buy and 9.99 to sell. but you can buy as many shares as you want (of the same stock) for 9.99, it just has to be done at the same time (i.e. you can buy 1, 10, 100, or 1000 shares for 9.99).

 

[Necrosaro420]

okie cool thanks. Do you happen to know of any that does not require a certain amount of money in an account? Im poor, so im pretty much looking to like, say Hey I want 10 share's of X inc, and I use my credit card or whatnot and pay for it that way? Is that how Ameritrade is? Thanks for the help

 

[way]

Check out sharebuilder.com.

 

[Modeps]

I still use etrade.com... of course, I dont trade every week... I own 4 stocks and just keep an eye on them.

 

[Crono]

Yeah, I've invested in various energy companies, have found them to be fairly stable when it comes to stock prices (didnt invest in Enron). Izone.com is a pretty good broker (cheap anyways) but there is a cheaper online broker that I can't remember the name of ... I'll get back to you on that. I've also done direct investing, which has no fees, but most companies don't offer it as an option. My advice is to heavily research any company you want to invest in, and it's always better to invest in "main street" than some company you've never heard of . Just my 2 and a half cents.

 

[amdskip]

Go get a couple hundred shares of google

 

[OulOat]

I use scottrade. $7 flat for most stocks. For you, I don't think regular brokers are worth it since you only have enough money for a couple of shares at a time. Either go with sharebuilder or, better yet, a savings account until you have enough money to make a worthwhile investment.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

i use scottrade

 

[Spooner]

which company has the best research tools? I don't mind paying a bit more for trades if they have really good tracking/research tools available.

I've heard great things about etrade

 

[EULA]

I heard Martha Stewart messed with stocks or somethin...

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Necrosaro420
okie cool thanks. Do you happen to know of any that does not require a certain amount of money in an account? Im poor, so im pretty much looking to like, say Hey I want 10 share's of X inc, and I use my credit card or whatnot and pay for it that way? Is that how Ameritrade is? Thanks for the help

You're going to lose money buying small lots of stock on credit.

What you should do is open an INGDirect.com savings account, and put money into it until you have at least $2-3,000.

At that point I'd actually recommend just setting up an account at Vanguard.com to buy and hold on to shares of their VFINX S&P 500 index mutual fund. Boring, but a better investment than gambling on single stocks.

 

[Kenazo]

Dave's advice is the best, but assuming you won't do that;

I use eTrade.ca (I'm Canadian). Their advertised $9.99/trade is a great deal, but keep in mind the criteria for getting that deal. If you end up trading volume the fees will be higher (though that doesn't sound like a problem at this point). Also, The 9.99 is for their "power trader" accounts in which you have to have quite a bit of $ in, otherwise you end up paying $26.99/trade minimum

Check out their fee schedule at https://www.canada.etrade.com/pages/home/fees.shtml">This site</a>

Keep in mind, this is their Canadian info. Their website keeps pushing me to the Canadian website so I don't know what their American fees are like.

Generally, you're better off saving your cash up and buying your shares all at once or else the commissions will eat any potential profits.