Buying Stocks On Line.....?

Who do you use ?
.
My wife looked up Scott's Trade --
but thought the initial $500 fee was too high.
($7 hence forth, each trade - she told me )
.
She's all worked up over Facebook IPO.
.
Any suggestions ?

 

I use a different on-line broker, but according to Scottrade's website, the $500 is just the initial deposit to open an account, not a fee!

 

i use scottrade. don't know about a $500 initial fee? i just deposited money and off i went. they make it really easy to get started.

 

I also used Scottrade and there was no up front fee, just a deposit to open the account.

 

thanks eveybody !
I guess she misread --
She's going w/ Scottrade.

 

Any other service?

Is there any other service that does not have an initial deposit amount that is good?

 

Any of the mainstream ones are fine, a word of caution though, don't fixate on saving a buck or two on commissions, what matters is how your trades perform - the couple bucks on each end is meaningless, unless if you're a big time trader, and if you are one of those, good luck to you.

 

How are you going to trade without an initial deposit? I wouldn't bother with less than 500 since at that level the fees will eat up all your capital.

 

Yeah, even at $500, I don’t think that there is a compelling risk-reward case for buying stocks vs. a much safer investment that doesn’t charge fees. Even at Scottrade’s fairly low $7.99 commission (and that’s charged to buy and again to sell), you’re going to be over three percent in the red from the very beginning. And that’s if you only wanted to buy one stock/fund/etf/whatever. For every other investment you buy, you’d be adding another three-plus percent to the hole you started from.

 

TD Ameritrade for me.

Great customer service.

 

I am using Etrade for the Facebook IPO and Fidelity but I think you have to be a lonf term customer to have a lot of hope of getting shares.

 

I have used E-Trade in the past and was happy with them.
Definitely read to ensure you don't have to do X number of trade per year or something.
Sometimes you can find offers for 10 free trades with a new account.

I will say I prefer this process much more than using a broker.

 

I used to day trade for a living for about 4+ years but now I use Scottrade. They do have a $500 minimum to open an account.

They're alright, their streaming PC app is adequate for monitoring charts and placing orders in real time. The rest of their services like checkwriting and transferring money from your bank account are OK.

They have kind of an anachronistic branch system though; you can call a branch, but if you have to submit a Scottrade form to someone at the branch, you can't just email it directly, you have to either walk in, or email it to a central hub which then emails it to the person.I probably would have gone with someone else if I had to do it over again.

No Joe Schmoes are gonna get any FB IPO shares from their online broker, you're gonna have to buy them on the open market when FB opens some time Friday morning. Make sure you have a ceiling limit price in mind, don't place a market order or you'll get screwed for sure.

 

IPOs are designed with the single purpose of screwing the average investor in order for the owner(s) of the company and the brokerage firms to pocket as much money as possible. so just beware especially when it's a hugely publicized IPO like this one.

 

I have a feeling FB is a fad.

 

MySpace turned out to be a fad...............

 

Hey if I can buy 500 sh at $40 when it opens and sell it a couple of hours later for $50, I don't give a shit if it's a fad or a communist plot.

All these web sites now that either offer the opportunity to log in using a FB account or require you to log in using your FB account in order to do certain things, like comment - guess what - you're now logged into the FB network and FB is then collecting your data forever until you either go to FB and log out or don't use the web for 60 days. And even after you log out, if you visit a page that has a Like button.

 

I use ameritrade for years now. If you want into the Facebook iPod you have to be one of the following and this is for all the onlines:

A. Account value of 250k or higher
B. member for 1-3 years actively depending on service
C. Have more than 30 trades a month at least on ameritrade and 40 on etrade iirc.

I have two portfolios on ameritrade. One for my day to day penny stocks. It's like gambling but takes longer to find if you made money and one for my long term investments.

 

The truth!
My company was "employee owned" when they did their IPO but employee shareholders were locked out of selling for 1 year after the IPO. We all watched the price shoot up and then collapse about the time employees were eligible to sell. Price remains depressed to this date, some 6 years later.

 

Did she buy?

So Joe Strummer, did she buy and at what price?