Teach Me How To Buy Stocks?
Q: I'd like to learn how to get started. I have already chosen a few stocks. Can someone tell me how I go about buying them? Do I have to have a broker? Where can I find a broker? Do I do it from the bank? How much are the brokerage fees?
A:
First thing, write a check for $500.00 and go to www.mytrack.com and sign up to
get yourself this on-line broker and mail that check to them.
Other brokers charge more to open an account and some do not let you do all
types of trades.
Happy trading and, I would like to say good luck, but if you learn the skills
and PLAN your trades
Don't invest more than you'd be willing to lose. (That was the first bit of
advice when I got here, and you can believe it is very good advice.)
Datek offers pretty good service for 10 bucks a buy or sell. Buy and Hold
offers good service for 3 bucks a buy or sell but they don't carry all the
companies and they only trade twice a day. (The idea is to buy your stocks and
hold them for a very long time. A couple good books about this type of
investing: 8 steps to 7 figures by Charles Carlson and The Millionaire Next Door
by Stanley and Danko.)
Being as you are young, you will probably be more interested in day trading.
That is where the "action" is, after all. I find it very risky, and only do it
on occasion.
There are tons of good web sites to help you learn. I like smartmoney.com and
also the magazine "Smart Money". You have already been told about motley
fool, and any search engine will give you lots of sites too.
There are some super people in this ng... I lurked here for months before I
posted, to get the feel for it and to learn. I only started buying after the
spring fall out, and if we are headed back down to those lows, I will be buying
more.
Besides all that... the most important advice from any of us would probably
be....
buy low, sell high.
Is there really any expert in stock analysis? I do not believe that
there is truly one , I only believe that people's stock pick can turn
out to be a propitious because events turned in the favor of the select
stock.However for a beginner before you put down a dime in stock you
need an extensive - do - not -rush education as to what you want to buy
and once you get a feel of what you want to buy use that as model going
forward. You are definitely going to make mistake no one is perfect and
you will loose money sometimes but to improve your chances subscribe to
investor's business daily . Ithink that the article there are so
insighful and unbiased and you will definitely get informed if you visit
www.investors.com
Trading stocks is hobby to me and I think with time you can grow to make
a fortune in the business but much work and research is needed it is not
a game of gambling and do not let anyone fool you.
First of all I would get some sort of internet on-line brokerage. Right now I
have E-Trade and everything was ok until they charged me for something that was
not my fault. They took care of the problem and for that I am staying with
them. With E-Trade another big one is Datek.com. Datek is what I should have
singed up for. However I didn't like the way they quoted prices. They didn't
give much info, just price and stuff. However you can do after hours trading on
Datek before and after the market opens. This is a plus.
5/3rd Bank which is located in the Midwest, Florida, and now New Mexico or
Colorado was my original broker. They charged me $60 a trade plus a little
extra depending on the number of shares you buy. This is a total rip-off. I am
getting trades on E-Trade for $20 and if I trade enough I will get them even
cheaper. However I have some tips: The first stock I got was Microstrategy. I
got in at $19. This company recently was being sued and investigated by the SEC
for wrong earnings estimates. Well the high on the company was $333 a share so
I said what the hey. I got in and it went up to $63 in a week in a half. I
should have sold it after that Friday during after hours when it was going down
for around $59. That is the first lesson. If your stock goes down a few
dollars on after hours trading you may want to sell some or all of it. Anyways,
that Monday I sold it at $54. Now I made some good money, however I wasted half
of it on 'penny' stocks. Use caution on penny stocks. When you buy 1,000
shares of something at $1.25 and it drops a dime, that's doesn't seem like much,
but it's $100 you have lost. You can see how this will add up. Well I have
learned a 2nd lesson, don't buy/sell/buy/sell unless you are making money.