Efini~FC3S

iTrader: (4)

Learn me some: Purchasing stocks.

So I have some cash and a certain stock I'm interested in purchasing. I'm fairly confident the stock will be heading upwards and am comfortable buying a few hundred shares.

My question is: who would you recommend to for doing some trading. I'm not a day trader nor planning to be. I'm not interested in penny stocks or that stuff. I just want to buy some stock and then sell it in a month or two.

So who's good for just basic trading? "E-trade" "Scott trade". "Buttrade". Etc. etc?

I don't want to pay extra for trading advice or fancy financial info. I'm not interested in mutual funds or IRAs, etc.

Thanks in advance for your input

DNMakinson

iTrader: (3)

I use Scottrade. I think it is $7 transactions for stock trades. There are brick and mortar outlets as well, if you need to get your $$$ quickly, rather than have a check mailed (ETF has a fee added).

Dot3

iTrader: (1)

I use tradeking. Something like $4 a transaction.

kenzo42

iTrader: (6)

Clue us in so we can all afford baller turbo setups.

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

They dont do direct deposit? I had company stock options managed by UBS that I just recently sold off and the ONLY way to get the money was to give them my bank account and they sold them off. It was like a $17 transaction fee mainly because I owned partial shares, I ended up loosing like $7 on them. It sucked slightly I just started into the share matching program and then 3 months later the company decides they're selling my division so I wont ever get 3 years vested to get my matching shares, AND at the same time they decided to delist the company from the NYSE so I had to dump them off quick because UBS NY was going to freeze them for a year after the delisting before they'd be transferred to UBS Germany. Just a whole bunch of suck.

festersays

iTrader: (3)

If you plan on staying in the stock market even a little after you're done with this short term investment I would really recommend a brick and mortar place. Although online is cheaper, something about dealing with a real person, in person when doing money business just feels better to me. I don't know how far they reach out, but I also live in Ohio and Baker&Co has always taken really good care of me.

DNMakinson

iTrader: (3)

Leafy. They will do Electronic Funds Transfer to bank acct, but for a fee.

Enginerd

iTrader: (1)

Don't buy anything right now. Throw money into an account. Watch a few things you're interested in and familiar with, or research something new that you're interested in. Watch the market fall 3-5% the next few weeks, then buy something. OR short Facebook for the next few weeks.

I mostly invest in high dividend REITS and options. I have a fairly conservative strategy. The dividends that are paid provide a level of protection against moderate fluctuations in stock price, and they also release some of my anxiety from short term price fluctuations. Buy multiples of 100 shares of you favorite high dividend REIT, sell a covered call as the stock rises while approaching the ex-dividend date, collect the dividend and the call premium. Reinvest dividend and call premium into more shares. Repeat.

Tekel

iTrader: (2)

I own 3 shares of facebook. Should I sell now?!?!

Enginerd

iTrader: (1)

I think it could be a good long term play. For the moment, I feel it's overpriced currently.

Tekel

iTrader: (2)

It was more of a joke. I bought them about half way in to the crash after the IPO just because I could. They will either split and be worth 10k in 20 years or die in a beautiful fiery crash.

Enginerd

iTrader: (1)

Facebook, IMHO, has made a few pretty decent changes to be profitable. I actually just closed my account because the changes significantly turned me off to the service. First, In my case, my 100 adult friends that would usually only post personal updates and events now "like", post, share, and spam all sorts of advertising bullshit all over my wall. That's what Facebook wanted, but I personally can only read 1-2 spam polls and blogs a day before I'm bored with it. Second, I got tired of going into my activity log and seeing **** that I clearly remember deleting months prior.

But, sure, I see profitability in them. Ignorant people to profit from aren't going away anytime soon.

Efini~FC3S

iTrader: (4)

Thanks for all the input guys.

Enginerd - your advice in post 8 seems really solid but I'm mostly just interested in buying and selling one specific stock. I'll probably wait and see what happens next week with all the earnings reports coming out.

Thanks again

y8s

iTrader: (8)

omg stock advice
research the companies you believe in
hold it for 3+ years
do not check the market more than monthly unless you've heard specific news about your investment companies.
re-buy on a regular basis.

anything beyond that will require an education.

Enginerd

iTrader: (1)

Do NOT sell a put for a Chinese company in an emerging market and then forget the expiration date by a week...learned that one the hard way hahaha

Efini~FC3S

iTrader: (4)

I'm not asking for stock advice.

I'm asking which online/offline trading house I should use?

Which ones have low fees, good customer service, fast movement of my monies, etc?

Maybe the title is misleading...

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

If you want to transact individual stocks, look here: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/

Extremely fast clearing of trades; seconds, not hours. Low fees. No BS.

Their UI is designed for experienced users / day-traders / etc., and can appear intimidating at first as compared to sites like Etrade (think MS3 vs. PowerCard), but it's not that hard to learn.

That said, the only brokerage house I actually use these days is Vanguard, mostly since the only money I have in the market right now is in mutual funds, mostly sector funds. I'm too busy / lazy for individual securities trading.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

it might be a little misleading...

I use etrade because my stock options were done through it and i had to create an account to get them. I have no complaints and they're very pro and responsive when I (RARELY) need something.

They do have a nice perk of refunding non-etrade ATM fees and only charging miniscule foreign transaction fees if you need cash in another country. that plus a capital one card = you save when you travel abroad.

they (like most non stone age banks) also now do photo deposit with your smartphone. this was probably the single biggest issue I had with them prior to that invention. you had to mail checks in to the office or find the branch/ATM (luckily there are some here).

Sparetire

I use Scottrade as I am also a complete novice, but I do check on stuff daily. I think of it as legal gambling, like poker in Vegas. If you know WTF you are doing, you will probably make money, but you will still lose some hands here and there too.

My advice after 1 year of being in the market (more for those looking to get in on a long term basis and across a wide range of classes but primarily equities):

Ignore news. They are full of ****. The sky is falling and then it turns out no, it was just raining gold. Trade based on that and you are wasting your time.

Unless you get very educated and learn about chart patterns, puts, calls, shorting stuff, etc, buy and hold. Unless you are close to retirement and/or buying utter crap, your money will not magically disappear on long positions. Don't freak out. If you are truly worried about it, put a order to sell at a certain price in place, but beware, that's an incredibly good way to sell something just at its bottom and end up with the worst possible result.

Timing: Yours sucks. I have been ultra conservative the past year as I have been oh so confident that the correction is coming soon and blah blah blah and I would get some great entry point. Missed out on a ton of gains that way. I am still in cash to a very large degree, but for gods sake don't plan on waiting for the next 2008/2009. Nobody knows when it will hit. And for all the horrors of it, I made my money back by 2012. Could I have theoretically made a fortune by selling on 07 and buying in 10? Yeah. I could also have guessed wrong, bought in 08, panicked and sold, lost 50% of my value, then missed out on some of the best years the stock market has ever seen. Take the long view.

Stuff I have money in:

VTWO - Its a dog right now, don't get in. Don't sell, but don't get in now.
LVLT - Lots of fun, really volatile, keep in mind they were stuck at like 32 forever and with new leadership they went up 10 bucks a share pretty quickly. I know this company, they have some quality people and real valuable assets. If they can just stop the shopping spree and consolidate, they are in a good position cash-flow wise.
GLD - LOL, Don't get this. I still think its over valued and its been beaten bloody for like 14 months. But I keep it around because it have very little in it and its fun to watch it bounce around.
FPI - My risky one. Basically an REIT on farm land, which I thin on a macro level has to become more valuable over time in a big way, even with some hype lately. But like all RIETs, they can get slammed when interest rates and inflation are wonky, like right now. It was an IPO at 14 and its like low 13s now. I don't see it going lower and they are buying up some good assets. If interest rates and inflation go up though, it might take a drubbing.

If oil goes down into the high to mid 90s I will buy some USO. I don't give 2 ***** about how calm Libya is right now or if ISIS cant hold the South of Iraq, oil is not going below 100 a barrel for long ever again, especially if the dollar looses a bit against the Euro or the Yuan gets stronger or the Chinese go back to rapid expansion or anything bad happens in the world near oil production. And none of those things will happen right? Which is probably why we will not get an entry point for oil below 100 LOL. Just sayin.

Edit: Vanguard has the lowest fees and at the end of the day that's more important than cracker jack stock pickers. I like their ETFs.

krissetsfire

iTrader: (1)

I have an education and this is what I practice for myself. Capital gains is a bitch. I have been doing very well in mutual funds and commodities the last 8 years. I started dabbling in real estate the last few years but all my major gains have been in commodities.

When I am dealing with older clients that need to be more aggressive I don't necessarily follow those rules but the returns tend to average quite a bit lower.

I use E-Trade and a local broker. Depends on where and what I'm trading.