[Tarazet]

I have no more stocks, finally sold my JOB shares at a slim profit - 300 at $1.72 vs. $1.65 just about covers the cost of trades. My mutual fund JABAX has been doing significantly better - 5% gain in less than a month with a healthy dividend coming on the 30th. Not too shabby.

[Cloudy]

Can someone post a link or give advice to a newb interested in buying individual stocks? I've only messed with index funds in my 401k until now...

Stuff like:
What's the best/cheapest brokerage account?
Hidden fees to watch out for etc..

I'm interested in buying stocks in a company that hasn't gone public yet (sometime in 2008) and I'd like to get this all set before then..

[mrWalrus]

mrwalrus must be hiding in a corner by now. Rim is doing fantastic with no signs of slowing down. My portfolio is dying out now, i'm just selling off everything as i wait to change brokers where i'll be paying $46 less per 2 trades. :)

hah.. no not really. Busy more than anything. Most on this board seem more concerned with Britney on the VMA's than stocks so...

Anyway, RIMM. Yeah that's taken a really nice turn up, I got on a little early. I got out for a slight loss before it moved aggressively higher over these last couple days. Actually. I put the position back on, this time to the tune of 25 Sept 80 puts @ a $.80 cost basis.

Take a look at the chart at this link: http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticke...ost=7704#65642

I think, am betting, RIMM that is making an 'exhaustion rally'. Meaning I would book my profits if I were long. You'll find, I'm quick to admit when I'm wrong, and I don't gloat when I'm right. I just try to do what the market tells me. using the all the tools available to make educated guesses then trading those setups, quickly retreating when I'm wrong.

BTW, I still think the market is going to take a tremendous dump.. We've priced in a cut 50 point basis point by the Fed next Tuesday but there really is no reason for the cut and if they do it the dollar is going to drop further in value and you're going to start seeing things going higher in cost.. ie. oil closed at $80 a barrel yesterday. That's just the beginning. So that means if we get less of a rate cut then that the market will sell off.

Not to sound to crazy but I am humbly suggesting that people take any winning positions they have off the table until at least next Wednesday.

[Cloudy]

No one answered my question about the best/cheapest brokerage account for newbz :\

[koam]

No one answered my question about the best/cheapest brokerage account for newbz :\

Zecco.com

$0 trades

:D

Profit?

[Cloudy]

Before I sign up for Zecco (been looking at that one and sharebuilder), anyone want to share their experiences with the company?

[painey]

I managed to sell my TTWO shares today
I invested £1,000;

bought:
100 @ $14.38
55 @ $12.44

sold:
155 @ $16.14

Total after all commission charges, and most importantly, currency conversion:

£1,239.21

23.92% profit, in 1 month, 3 days. Im delighted :D My first trades ever.

[koam]

I managed to sell my TTWO shares today I invested £1,000; bought: 100 @ $14.38 55 @ $12.44 sold: 155 @ $16.14 Total after all commission charges, and most importantly, currency conversion: £1,239.21 23.92% profit, in 1 month, 3 days. Im delighted :D My first trades ever.

Nice.

Feds are going to make their announcements tomorrow, i expect a huge drop in the Dow tomorrow.

[koam]

Can someone quickly get me the price of NTDOY (not using the pink sheets site, that's 15 min delayed)?

Selling off everything today, i got huge spikes, 5% and 12%. My new account is active tomorrow.

also, does anyone know when Q3's financials come out?

P.S I was wrong about the drop, which is good cause it's letting me sell today :D

[Miroku]

P.S I was wrong about the drop, which is good cause it's letting me sell today :D

Were you expecting fed rates to stay the same?

Just curious

[koam]

Were you expecting fed rates to stay the same? Just curious

I was expecting a drop, but i also thought the Dow would drop as well. I was wrong, everything has soared.

[mrWalrus]

I too was expecting a drop. I was very, very wrong.

thankfully my forex trading has been on point. :D

[gkryhewy]

Selling off everything today, i got huge spikes, 5% and 12%. My new account is active tomorrow.

So... you sold today to get back in tomorrow?

[Forgotten Ancient]

I share the same questions as Cloudy.

I follow my 401(k) pretty closely (made $811.19 just today!), but I'm starting to get too much into my savings account and I feel comfortable testing the waters with a grand or two. Is it worth it to buy stocks with that amount of money? Where should I go to start? I want to get more involved in this stuff, even if I could potentially lose a chunk of change in the learning process.

[mrWalrus]

This might not be a popular opinion but I suggest buying a book or two first. Here's a great one to get started with and might be the only one you need to begin being successful.
http://www.amazon.com/Come-Into-My-T...0154201&sr=1-3

It's much more prudent to spend $50 and take your time rather than jumping in feet first with all your clothes on.

[Forgotten Ancient]

This might not be a popular opinion but I suggest buying a book or two first. Here's a great one to get started with and might be the only one you need to begin being successful. http://www.amazon.com/Come-Into-My-T...0154201&sr=1-3 It's much more prudent to spend $50 and take your time rather than jumping in feet first with all your clothes on.

Sounds like a pretty good idea. I read a lot of reports on the market nearly everyday, but I don't have a firm grasp on how to get involved. Kind of like following baseball statistics without knowing how to hit a fastball.

[Maxwell House]

No one answered my question about the best/cheapest brokerage account for newbz :\

Cheapest place if you plan to invest with margins is Interactive Brokers. Their commission is .005 per share, and they have easily the best interest rate on margins in the business.

[Maxwell House]

BTW, for the people buying and selling short term, do you realize that any profit you make will be added to your income for tax purposes if you sell a stock while holding it for less than a year?

If a stock is sold for profit while being held at least 12 months, it is only taxed at the flat capital gains rate of 15%. Short term, added to your income, most people are looking at a tax rate of 28-33% since the profit is added on top of your salary.

[Maxwell House]

Can someone quickly get me the price of NTDOY (not using the pink sheets site, that's 15 min delayed)? Selling off everything today, i got huge spikes, 5% and 12%. My new account is active tomorrow. also, does anyone know when Q3's financials come out? P.S I was wrong about the drop, which is good cause it's letting me sell today :D

Why are you selling though, after the fed just dropped the rate by 50 points? Historically, the market has gone up an average of 12.5% in the six months following a drop like todays.

[mr stroke]

WOW 0.5% point...

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070918/wall_street.html?.v=28

good or bad?

[kIdMuScLe]

ok i have stocks in Sirius right now, what would happen to my stocks when Sirius and XM merge together?

[Tarazet]

@ Mr. Stroke: If it helps to stabilize the credit issues long enough for the economy to recover, good. If it fails, VERY bad.

[teh_pwn]

WOW 0.5% point... http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070918/wall_street.html?.v=28 good or bad?

Sounds like the Feds are taking the possibility of a large recession very seriously. If this fails, I agree with sonarret...a very bad recession would occur.

I'm just not comfortable with the idea that the stock shoots up as a result of people able to get into debt easier. It's really not a long term solution. We're in a 1920s mentality almost.

If we do have another crash, I'm sure someone will blame it on capitalism or some nonsense. The Federal Reserve needs to stop encouraging debt, and stop inflating our money by printing it all the damn time.

[mikeybwright]

What would be the best route for me to go to get like 10 shares of something like Ford (yes i know how low it is)? I'm just entering my second year at university, and I want to start building a portfolio (i live in the US). Any advice would be great

[koam]

Why are you selling though, after the fed just dropped the rate by 50 points? Historically, the market has gone up an average of 12.5% in the six months following a drop like todays.

Because my account is getting canned since i'm opening a new account elsewhere. The transfer fee is $50 so i'd rather just sell since i don't have many shares. I buy and sell short term only. I average out to a bit over $100 a day in profit on top of my salary. With the new account, i'll be make $46 more per trade thanks to the low commision so that should bump my daily average to about $140. I'm aiming to make $150 daily by year end.

[teh_pwn]

What would be the best route for me to go to get like 10 shares of something like Ford (yes i know how low it is)? I'm just entering my second year at university, and I want to start building a portfolio (i live in the US). Any advice would be great

Buy value stock among these:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/17/maga...s_performance/

[koam]

What would be the best route for me to go to get like 10 shares of something like Ford (yes i know how low it is)? I'm just entering my second year at university, and I want to start building a portfolio (i live in the US). Any advice would be great

10 shares? That's like $85 total. You're never going to make money off that, you need a lot more than 10 shares, especially considering the cost of transactions. Go with at least 100, if you can't afford that (har har afford) get 50 shares.

You should realize that stocks under $10 aren't very volatile so you're going to keep those shares for a really really long time before you make a decent amount of money.

[Maxwell House]

PANL is awesome, bought them at $14.98 at this time yesterday, they're at $16.74 right now. Currently, i'm up $300 with my holdings. Which isn't bad considering that 2 of them are brand new and the other two weren't so hot last week. Overall Initial investment: $6000. Current Worth: $7500. First investment: April 2007. Change: +25% :D:D:D

Ouch, you are short term selling with that little? Commissions and taxes are going to eat up your profits, IMO.

[koam]

Ouch, you are short term selling with that little? Commissions and taxes are going to eat up your profits, IMO.

I'm at $8200 now. Commission fees are only $7 per trade. Taxes don't matter, you get taxed a percentile.

[gkryhewy]

I average out to a bit over $100 a day in profit on top of my salary.

Good job! You must follow many more stocks daily than I do.

[Cloudy]

Cheapest place if you plan to invest with margins is Interactive Brokers. Their commission is .005 per share, and they have easily the best interest rate on margins in the business.

I'm a newb. No margins!

[gkryhewy]

I'm a newb. No margins!

As has been pointed out several times, zecco.com has NO COMMISSIONS. Trading is free, up to 40 trades per month.

[Maxwell House]

I'm at $8200 now. Commission fees are only $7 per trade. Taxes don't matter, you get taxed a percentile.

Yes, but short term trading, your profits will be added to your income, which means a hefty tax rate.

Capital gains on long term trades is only 15%.

If you want a much cheaper broker, go to www.interactivebrokers.com. It is only .005 per share per trade. Buying 200 shares would cost you $1.

[koam]

Yes, but short term trading, your profits will be added to your income, which means a hefty tax rate. Capital gains on long term trades is only 15%. If you want a much cheaper broker, go to www.interactivebrokers.com. It is only .005 per share per trade. Buying 200 shares would cost you $1.

True, but if i can make more money in short intervals of time, than less money over a long period of time, i'd rather deal with the heavier taxes. I'm also in canada, we have different rules here.

[Maxwell House]

True, but if i can make more money in short intervals of time, than less money over a long period of time, i'd rather deal with the heavier taxes. I'm also in canada, we have different rules here.

Well good luck. :)

[Javaman]

True, but if i can make more money in short intervals of time, than less money over a long period of time, i'd rather deal with the heavier taxes. I'm also in canada, we have different rules here.

Your investment is going to need to gain over 25% (plus any trading fees) in under a year just to break even. :lol Good luck with that. It just doesn't sound worth the high risk to me. You would be much better off settling for growth mutual funds and hanging onto them for a while. While not as "exciting" it's much more safe, and more likely to gain you more of a profit.

http://www.travismorien.com/FAQ/trad...dersuccess.htm

Odean's study of stock traders Terry Odean, then a grad student at the University of California at Berkeley, and his Professor Brad Barber researched the accounts of 10,000 discount-brokerage trading accounts between 1987 to 1993. Later, Odean repeated this study on a much larger scale, in the repeat he examined the accounts of 66,465 households from 1991 to 1996. So in total, he looked at a huge number of accounts, and a vast number of trades. The conclusions from each study were virtually identical: trading hurts your wealth. Odean found that as a group all amateur investors underperform the market due to higher than necessary trading costs. But the 20% of traders with the highest turnover underperformed the most. In the sample, while the market went up an annualised 17.1% over the period, the average investor/trader with a turnover of 80%pa returned 15.3%, but the 20% with the highest turnover, 283%pa on average, got only 10%pa. This study was performed with the clients of a discount (non web) brokerage. How would the figures change for the ultra cheap Internet brokers? According to Odean, not very much. Commissions were an important part of the reason why active traders had the worst performance, but the main bogeyman was the bid/ask spread. In fact Odean believes that traders as a group are now doing even worse than they did in the old discount brokerage days because turnover has increased even more. Odean offers the following example: The average trade in his sample was roughly $13,000 in size. Trading through a discount broker, an investor might have paid $60 or so in commissions "round-trip," or $30 for the buy and $30 for the sale. But by Odean's estimate, the typical investor also lost a full 1% to the bid-ask spread -- or $130 on this typical $13,000 purchase. If this investor switches to an online broker that makes trades for only $10, the "round-trip" cost of the trade falls to only $20 -- but the spread still amounts to a loss of $130, for a total transaction cost of $150. No doubt $150 is cheaper than $190 but it's only around 21% less, not the 66% that investors might believe that he or she is saving. And even this 21% savings could be swallowed up if investors choose to change their behavior and trade more frequently as a result of the lower commissions. As a matter of fact, Odean did find a tendency to trade more when traders switched to cheap web brokers. In the second study he examined the trading records of 1,600 traders that switched from discount telephone trading to deep discount web trading. He found that turnover increased by a third and traders doubled their exposure to "speculative" stocks. That is to say that telephone traders were twice as likely as web traders to buy large stocks, compared to web traders that on average concentrated more on small speculative stocks trading on the NASDAQ and other minor exchanges. The most interesting finding of Odean's research is that traders underperform as a group even after taking out trading costs. On average, the stocks these traders sold outperformed the market, and those they bought underperformed the market. One year after each trade, the average investor wound up more than 9% poorer than if had he done nothing. Two years later, the results were even worse.

Also a fascinating point...

Another finding was that the traders in the group had a strong tendency to sell the wrong stocks. Odean says traders "strongly prefer to sell their winning investments and hold on to their losing investments, even though the winning investments they sell subsequently outperform the losers they continue to hold." Selling a loser amounts to admitting you have made a mistake. Traders hate that, they much prefer to sell stocks at a profit, which makes them feel like a winner, as a result traders systematically weeded out good stocks from their portfolios and retained poor ones.

[bggrthnjsus]

i've got a question for all you stock types...so this fed rate cut is responsible for a lot of the big gains today...how long can we expect those gains to hold for? is stuff going to go up, then dive back down again sometime soon, or should we expect things to hold for awhile?

[Javaman]

i've got a question for all you stock types...so this fed rate cut is responsible for a lot of the big gains today...how long can we expect those gains to hold for? is stuff going to go up, then dive back down again sometime soon, or should we expect things to hold for awhile?

I'm betting that it'll likely fall around each of the ARM resets, falling more then it should due to fears then the actual loss. Worried people trying to play the daytrade game will likely jump out bringing the market lower then it really "should" be. Once that happens it'll probably be a good time to buy. (With long term investment in mind) Of course no-one knows for certain what will happen, but historically speaking the market always goes up over the long term.

If you really want to make some money, keep slapping money into a decent 401k or Roth mutual fund, especially while still young.

[bggrthnjsus]

I'm betting that it'll likely fall around each of the ARM resets, falling more then it should due to fears then the actual loss. Worried people trying to play the daytrade game will likely jump out bringing the market lower then it really "should" be. Once that happens it'll probably be a good time to buy. (With long term investment in mind) Of course no-one knows for certain what will happen, but historically speaking the market always goes up over the long term.

ARM reset?

edit: adjustable rate mortgage? so when does that happen...when do i sell is what i'm asking really

[Javaman]

ARM reset?

Adjustable Rate Mortgage. Even with the Feds cutting the interest rate, most people with ARM loans are still going to be paying a lot more per month for their mortgage over the next couple of months/years.

[Javaman]

ARM reset? edit: adjustable rate mortgage? so when does that happen...when do i sell is what i'm asking really

No-one can answer that except you. Personally I'm staying in for the long haul. I've managed to sock away $78,000 in my 401k over a decade a couple hundred at a time and am looking forward to retiring a happy man in 30 years. (barring a global disaster or course)

[Ether_Snake]

No-one can answer that except you. Personally I'm staying in for the long haul. I've managed to sock away $78,000 in my 401k over a decade a couple hundred at a time and am looking forward to retiring a happy man in 30 years. (barring a global disaster or course)

Too bad! Global disaster is certain!:|

[boo7z]

No-one can answer that except you. Personally I'm staying in for the long haul. I've managed to sock away $78,000 in my 401k over a decade a couple hundred at a time and am looking forward to retiring a happy man in 30 years. (barring a global disaster or course)

How about a national disaster, such as the collapse of Social Security? You are going to need to invest at a higher rate than that if you want to retire when you are 60.

[Stele]

How about a national disaster, such as the collapse of Social Security? You are going to need to invest at a higher rate than that if you want to retire when you are 60.

None of us will be relying on social security for retirement. So if it collapses, then it collapses. A bigger problem is the continuing devaluation of the American dollar. But yeah, even if that guy can guarantee an annual return of 10% for the next 30 years, $78K will still only be $1.5 million in 30 years, which is not enough with current inflation and woefully inadequate with higher inflation (which is expected with the plummeting dollar).

[Javaman]

How about a national disaster, such as the collapse of Social Security? You are going to need to invest at a higher rate than that if you want to retire when you are 60.

Yeah, I think 60 may be a bit too ambitious. I'd be far better off aiming for the full blown retirement age of 67. If I let it ride without putting anything else in it and it grows at an average of 7% it'll be close to $900,000.

[Javaman]

None of us will be relying on social security for retirement. So if it collapses, then it collapses. A bigger problem is the continuing devaluation of the American dollar. But yeah, even if that guy can guarantee an annual return of 10% for the next 30 years, $78K will still only be $1.5 million in 30 years, which is not enough with current inflation and woefully inadequate with higher inflation (which is expected with the plummeting dollar).

I think I can live with that.

[Stele]

I think I can live with that.

Yeah, if you travel back in time 30 years from now. People in their 20s today will need 4-5 million to retire.*

*Assuming the dollar doesn't plummet to hell or you don't plan on kicking the bucket when you're 67, as social security and most company pensions assumed people would do back in the day.

[koam]

Your investment is going to need to gain over 25% (plus any trading fees) in under a year just to break even. :lol Good luck with that. It just doesn't sound worth the high risk to me. You would be much better off settling for growth mutual funds and hanging onto them for a while. While not as "exciting" it's much more safe, and more likely to gain you more of a profit.

You need to take a tax course pronto because your math is complete off. My best friend is a broker and I looked it up myself as well and can confirm this. I've also consulted someone I know who works in the taxation department.

First of all, you're not taxed at all on commission fees, this is why every single broker in existance gives you your book value. Your book value is the price you paid for a stock minus the commission.

Secondly, let's say you buy a stock at $5010 (at $10 commission) and you sell it at $5510 (again assume $10 commission). Your profit is $500. You're not taxed on $5500, you're taxed on HALF of the $500. The amount of that HALF of $500 that you're taxed on depends on your tax bracket.

So in a nutshell. You're only taxed on the profits you made. So if we look at my case. I started off with $6000 and now i'm at $8200. These are both book values. So 8200 - 6000 = $2200 in profit. I'm going to get taxed 40% (my tax bracket) on $1100. In the end, my profit is $1100 + 60% of $1100.

[xsarien]

I think I can live with that.

Given inflation, I doubt you can.

[mrWalrus]

just in case anyone didn't get a chance to see this in the Fed rate cut thread.

This is the dollar index over the last year two years. http://quotes.ino.com/chart/?s=NYBOT...w&w=15&t=l&a=4