Stocks?

[Cryptin]

Anyone buy and sells them? I've been looking into getting into the stock market, of course buying inexpensive ones and gradually working my way up. I need some info on a good stock site which I can buy/sell and maybe a site to learn it.

[Spontaneous Cumbustion]

I use Scottrade, works really well, a lot of information and it's not horribly expensive to execute buys/sells.

[Kilivek2.0]

I use TDameritrade.

I haven't had any problems.

Sign up for whichever one gives the most benefits for however much cash you put int. I know TDAmeritrade gives you $100 bucks and a month of free trading or something if you put in 2000.

[spronk]

tdameritrade recently had someone hack in and steal all 14 million of their customers addresses, email. they say they didn't get the SSN or account numbers, woo great security!

[xilsharn]

Originally Posted by spronk

tdameritrade recently had someone hack in and steal all 14 million of their customers addresses, email. they say they didn't get the SSN or account numbers, woo great security!

Hardly relevant.

Anyway, I've been thinking about getting into the stock market myself. It just seems so damned complicated. I've just been putting my overflows into a high-yield savings account till January, when hopefully I'll get up to about ten grand. Also maxing out my 401(k) (well, technically it's the Thrift Savings Plan but retirement plan, tomato toe-mah-toe).

How do places like E trade, scott trade etc., work? Do you keep a balance in an account? How liquid are they?

[Eggplant999]

Originally Posted by Cryptin

Anyone buy and sells them? I've been looking into getting into the stock market, of course buying inexpensive ones and gradually working my way up. I need some info on a good stock site which I can buy/sell and maybe a site to learn it.

Scottrade is pretty decent. If you have over $25k you'll get their program and don't have to deal with their shitty website.

Also buying inexpensive ones doesn't make sense... a stock's price doesn't matter. $20 stock with 1 million outstanding shares = $40 stock with 500,000 outstanding shares etc.

[Kilivek2.0]

You put money in it, buy stocks with it, and the whatever cash you don't use stays as cash. In TD Ameritrade the leftover balance is in money market, which earns like 5%.

Its as liquid as selling you stocks and then you have the balance back... and can transfer it to bank account. It's really not hard to do, just have to verify your bank account and wire in some funds.

[Eggplant999]

Originally Posted by xilsharn

Hardly relevant.

Anyway, I've been thinking about getting into the stock market myself. It just seems so damned complicated. I've just been putting my overflows into a high-yield savings account till January, when hopefully I'll get up to about ten grand. Also maxing out my 401(k) (well, technically it's the Thrift Savings Plan but retirement plan, tomato toe-mah-toe).

How do places like E trade, scott trade etc., work? Do you keep a balance in an account? How liquid are they?

With scottrade you can either have cash account or a margin account. I think that the majority of all accounts are margin. You can wire money in and out (2-3 hour wait) or just have them send checks, so I'd say that the account is pretty liquid.

[prescient63]

If you don't have a good amount of money to invest and really really want to build your own portfolio sharebuilder is actually a great deal. Check it out. They do bulk buys every tuesday i think it is, and it is really cheap. You shouldn't be trying to market time and day trade anyhow.

[AladainAF]

I started with an etrade account in 1998 and then moved to scottrade. Have had no issues with scottrade.

[Soriak]

Check the website of your bank and look into what kind of fonds they offer. Pick the one with the level of risk you can tolerate. (if you're young, you can accept a higher risk - no need to sell and a bad year or two will easily be compensated over time)

The game is long-term investment, not short term profit. You're not likely to beat the performance of good fonds, but you take a much higher risk because you can't diversify much. (some fonds have 100 companies or more in them) Yes, some people get rich trading on their own - they're the exception. To do that you need to be extremely well informed and have a sizable bank roll: you need to invest big to beat the fees that you pay for every transaction, and you need to be able to shrug off significant losses.

Not to mention the huge amount of time you save... it takes a long time to familiarize yourself with the market and the company you want to buy stock in.

[Ortega]

Originally Posted by Soriak

Check the website of your bank and look into what kind of fonds they offer. Pick the one with the level of risk you can tolerate. (if you're young, you can accept a higher risk - no need to sell and a bad year or two will easily be compensated over time)

The game is long-term investment, not short term profit. You're not likely to beat the performance of good fonds, but you take a much higher risk because you can't diversify much. (some fonds have 100 companies or more in them) Yes, some people get rich trading on their own - they're the exception. To do that you need to be extremely well informed and have a sizable bank roll: you need to invest big to beat the fees that you pay for every transaction, and you need to be able to shrug off significant losses.

Not to mention the huge amount of time you save... it takes a long time to familiarize yourself with the market and the company you want to buy stock in.

Uhh Scottrade is 7$ a trade.... You don't need to invest big to "beat the fees" and you should certainly never take a significant loss on one stock. If you're down 7-8% from your buy point its more then likely time to admit defeat and sell. I don't want to start a flame war, but from your post you're talking out of your ass and you can't even spell "funds" correctly. Anyways to the OP if you want to do stock read "One up on wall street" by Peter Lynch and "How to make money in stocks" by William J Oneil. Don't rush into the game!

[Soriak]

Originally Posted by Ortega

Uhh Scottrade is 7$ a trade.... You don't need to invest big to "beat the fees" and you should certainly never take a significant loss on one stock. If you're down 7-8% from your buy point its more then likely time to admit defeat and sell. I don't want to start a flame war, but from your post you're talking out of your ass and you can't even spell "funds" correctly. Anyways to the OP if you want to do stock read "One up on wall street" by Peter Lynch and "How to make money in stocks" by William J Oneil. Don't rush into the game!

/shrug, it's spelled "Hedge Fonds" in German and didn't show up as wrong in Firefox spell check - big deal...

But if you think after reading two or three or ten books you can beat portfolios built around diversification and risk spreading (and managed by professionals) over the long term, be my guest; it's not my money.

Can you make it big with high-risk investments? Of course, some people get lucky. Most people don't, but you don't hear those stories.

[Ortega]

Originally Posted by Soriak

/shrug, it's spelled "Hedge Fonds" in German and didn't show up as wrong in Firefox spell check - big deal...

But if you think after reading two or three or ten books you can beat portfolios built around diversification and risk spreading (and managed by professionals) over the long term, be my guest; it's not my money.

Can you make it big with high-risk investments? Of course, some people get lucky. Most people don't, but you don't hear those stories.

I wonder how you think all these "professionals" got started.....

[prescient63]

Originally Posted by Ortega

I wonder how you think all these "professionals" got started.....

Working at hedge funds, mutual funds, and investment banks where they had entire support teams of Ph.D's helping them.