Anyone use Etrade or Scottrade?

[BearcatShane09]

I don't know if this was the correct place to put this since you guys that are going to retire or have been retired probably don't mess to much with the online stock trading sites and what not but if you do can you tell me about it? I'm 22 and I really just want to learn about the stock market and get a feel for it so I'm considering opening an account with Scottrade with the minimum of 500 dollars. I know absolutely nothing about the stock market and how to do this. If I did this what is the cost of shares for an average company? How many shares should I buy? How do you know what stock to buy? Is it just one big crap shoot? If I could just get some advise for some of the most basic things it would be appreciated.

 

[chrootz]

Count me in, I wanted to know the advice too and wanted take a low risk investment.

 

[Catatonic]

I don't know if this was the correct place to put this since you guys that are going to retire or have been retired probably don't mess to much with the online stock trading sites and what not but if you do can you tell me about it? I'm 22 and I really just want to learn about the stock market and get a feel for it so I'm considering opening an account with Scottrade with the minimum of 500 dollars. I know absolutely nothing about the stock market and how to do this. If I did this what is the cost of shares for an average company? How many shares should I buy? How do you know what stock to buy? Is it just one big crap shoot? If I could just get some advise for some of the most basic things it would be appreciated.

I know this is a hard thing to do but may I suggest you trade for 1 year with "fake" money and see how your decisions and choices work out.
This is a good market to practice in because of the volatility and uncertainty.
It will make you wiser and more cautious.

 

[BearcatShane09]

Do you know of any good websites to do the fake tading with?

 

[BMWMC]

Scottrade, the one I use, has whats called "virtual trading" for your training wheels. For real trading they charge $7. That's $7 in and $7 out for $14 buy/sell a position. They have good tutorials on there site on trading. There also Investopedia.

I've been studying and trading stocks for 30 years. First mutual funds then individual stocks. I've taken years off in between but have learned quite a bit on the subject.

1, Never fall in love with any stock or any position you take.
2, Hope is an very very bad investment attitude.
3, Have a hard and fast sell rule. It depends on the beta of a stock (volatility). High volatility I sell around +-7% low volatility +-3%. Take profits quick and sell your losses even faster.
4, There's money in individual stocks but I mostly stay away from them. Bad new can wipe out position before the market even opens. I play index ETF's mostly the highly levered one. 2x-3x. I flip between long and short position and my longest holding time is 1-5 days.

Stocks markets are highly emotional and swing between being over bought to over sold. The game is to be on the right side of that trade either up or down.

CASH is always king!
There no such thing as a bad profit.
I rather have a small profit and miss a big move then to be caught in a down draft with my pants down and sell out at a steep loss.

REMEMBER you can always buy a stock back even after it runs up past your sell point and ride it up even higher BUT you have to have the cash to do it. That's where the sell disciple comes in. Cutting losses and taking profits.


Cheers.

 

[Benben]

Check out Seeking Alpha. Many, many articles on whatever type of investing that may interest you. The subscription for prime members is expensive. With it you get the information a day before the rest of us. I use the free service and get the articles in the areas that interest me a day later sent to my email. I figure if 1 day makes or breaks me I have no bussiness being in that trade. I personaly think I have learned more about stocks/bonds/options/futures from SA than any book I have read or show I have watched. Google Fiance and Yahoo Finance gives some great info. Use them in tandum with SA and whichever Brokerage account you set up.

I have a Merrill Edge Accountsimply because I use Bank of America. $6.95 per trade and no other fees. Easy and free for me to set up a $50 per week transfer from checking acount on Fridays. The stock screener is ok but I suspect the other sites have better. New service they have added is the "My Financial Picture" in-which I was able to link our Prudential 401K account and the Wife's 401K Fidelity account so I can see all of our savings at one time. Only downside is the UPS DESPP service through Computershare won't link.

bmwmc will disagree with me tooth and nail for what I am about to say, he and I are just different types of investors, but Dividend investing is a pretty safe way to start. Not as sexy as hitting a 10 bagger but sure is alot safer. On SA you'll see a huge and growing community of DGI investors. Here is 2 things that I have learned the hard way starting out: 1) Forgein companies come with an added tax that will eat into any profit in a nasty way. 2) Date of record is 3 days after you do a trade. This will effect surprising things like specials and options to buy extra shares at a discount for "shareholders of record."

With $500, $6.95 to buy and $6.95 to sell will greatly effect your profits. For Merril Edge, the purchase cost ($6.95) will be figured into your % gain/loss for tracking purposses I do not know about the other sites but I'd think they would. Dividend payments are NOT tracked for each possition taken. If I am down 2% in a possition but received 10% in divi's Merril Edge will still list me as down 2%. Merril Edge gives free Divi reinvestment service if thats what I choose. I don't as I am still diversifying. I do not know if the other brokerage sites give this service for free. I like limit orders on both sides of the trade, I REALLY LIKE LIMIT ORDERS.