Investing on the Internet

[Dave2]

I'm right now thinking about investing a little money in AMD. Does anyone know of a good reliable website that lets you invest money in the stock market? What about wallstreet.com?

[chuckiechan]

I use E-trade @ 19.95 per trade. I would not go with the lowest, nor the highest. I am a fairly active trader-careful and moderately profitable.

It is pretty straight forward and easy, has a good amount of research available. They have been around and have paid their dues.....

Remember- Invest with good solid research, not your heart!

Good luck... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Dave2]

I checked E-trade out and the problem is that I can't afford to deposit $1000 unless I use my credit card. I want to invest only around $50-100 because I've never invested in the stock market before and want to take it easy. Are there any affordable investing sites for me.

[hhieu]

sorry Dave, but most brokerages require a $1000/$2000 minimum equity balance to start up. actually, i don't know any that accepts less than $1000. i would recommend either E-trade or Ameritrade. like chuckiechan said "they have been around and have paid their dues". further more, those accounts are just like bank checking accounts. you can deposit $1000 and trade on only $50-$100...leave the rest for spending. by the way, www.wallstreet.com (http://www.wallstreet.com) is something else that i don't know about. it's like wagering on stock prices or something....

[AQR8]

E-Trade and Ameritrade are your best bets for individual stocks as has been already covered very well by hhieu and chuckiechan. You might want to look into mutual funds. A few will let you in with small initial deposits with regular monthly additions. There are plenty out there. Good luck.

[daveleau]

Ameritrade is soooooo relaxing though! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif
I hate that commercial!

[SysOpt]

You don't have to invest $1000, you just have to open an account with that money. That means that they open a money market account (like a savings account), and from there, you invest however much you want in stocks. AMD closed at $31 today, so the least you could invest is $31 (1 share).

In my personal opinion (although I'm not here to give financial advice) your money would be better invested elsewhere (bank CD's, bonds, municiple notes, mutual funds, etc.) until you can afford at least 100-200 shares of a particular stock. Course, if you only intend to buy a few shares, it really will be just for the experience because you're only going to make or lose a few dollars that way.

Also keep in mind as chuckiechan mentioned, brokerages charge you a fee to trade. So, if you buy one share of AMD at $31/share, pay a $20 fee, and sell it at $35 share, and pay a $20 fee, you're going to end up losing $36 (I think Ameritrade charges less but the concept is the same). Instead, I would practice trading with things like virtualstockexchange.com until you're ready to allocate more funds to the market. I have a healthy percentage of my net worth in the market so I am definitely all for it http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif, but it has to be worth your while.

-Scott

[This message has been edited by SysOpt (edited 01-03-2000).]

[stylin19]

some companies allow you buy stock directly. sometimes you can bypass the broker altogether, sometimews you have to buy one share thru a broker to be eligible.
There is a name for this kind of purchase, of which the name escapes me now

here is an example. 2 ways to join in this case.
1. it cost $7.50 plus $250.00 initial investment to enroll in the direct plan.
Or
2. you can buy one share from a broker and that would make you eligible.
Then you can contribute as little as $10 per whatever the agreed upon period is. Nice way to get started with minimum fees.
GE DIRECT (http://www.ge.com/investor/gesd/summary.htm)


This is not meant as an endorsement for GE DIRECT...it's only used as an example of alternate investing techniques.

Use the web to do your homework, you can also call a broker and find out about this type of purchase.

good luck


[This message has been edited by stylin19 (edited 01-04-2000).]

[AQR8]

Dave2 - aren't you glad you didn't dump a couple grand into tech stocks yesterday? Did you see what happened to the market today? Everyone said the hi tech stks would drop some time, today was the day for profit taking. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[bobcat]

Just and idea:


If you only have a little money to invest you could try a drip (Dividend Re-Investment). My experience with it is that it cost me $40 to join. I got a monthly mag that talked about various companies and what to look for in stocks...blah blah blah. This particular company had access to 150-200 stocks that do Drips. I paid the opening price for the stock and $7 processing fee and $10 to cover a posible increase in stock. When you buy a stock for the first time, you are only allow to buy 1 share. Once the share is bought, you deal directly with the company or its trust. You can then buy as many shares as you want. Now, any dividend you receive from the company goes back and buys you a % of stock.

The con: This is what happend to me and made me jump to E-Trade: You want to buy a stock @ 50 + 7 + 10 = 67. Now, it may take upto 3 months for the first share to be bought. So, the price could go up. Thats what happend to me. So, if the price jumped in 3 months to 100.00 you now, don't own 1 share but only 6/10 of a share...SUCK!!!

Now, once the first share is bought, since you are dealing direct with the company, they usually purchase every month. So, the price may increase or decrease, but it is not as drastic as having to wait the initial 3 months.

The pro: Once you have that first share, you can have any amount of money either taken out of your account or send it in, and they will then purchase what shares they can with your funds. This way, if you can only afford lets say, 30 a month, then thats it. There is no opening an account with 1K or 2K.

Once I got onto ETrade...I forgot about the DRIP.