Minimum number of shares you can buy?
 

I just opened my Scottrade account and have $5000 in it. I haven't bought any stocks yet, mostly out of not having enough information yet and fear. So yet another noob question (sorry):

Is there a minimum amount of shares you have to buy?

All of the recent buys on the Java updates are 100 shares or more. Buying 100 shares of something at $36 a share is a little scary for someone like me who knows very little.

Thanks

btw these are the stocks I have been looking at: EBAY AMZN DELL BBY OSI

Re: Minimum number of shares you can buy?
 

you can buy one share if you want. its just not a good idea.

the more shares you own the less juice (commission) per share you have to pay.

Re: Minimum number of shares you can buy?
 

Jdoe is correct. You can buy 1 share if you wanted. But also as he said, this wouldn't make sense in terms of commissions. For example, let's say you have an account with Interactive Brokers. They charge 1 cent per share for the first 500 shares, but they require a minimum commission of $1 for any trade. So if you buy any less than 100 shares in this case, you are not getting 1 cent/share.

Interestingly enough however, I have heard that several black boxes incorporate strategies where they buy or sell 1 share before showing their real intention. I believe it has something to do with order queue, and also ways to fake out other boxes(box wars), but as I do not do this myself, I can't comment on specifics.

Re: Minimum number of shares you can buy?
 

How about taxes on selling a stock? Say I buy $3500 in Dell and the next day it goes up to $4000.

1). Is there a fee to sell this the next day because I didn't own it longer than a day (in addition to the $7 Scottrade transaction fee)?

2). The $500 profit I make, I will pay taxes on this I assume. Do I get the $500 immediately and take the taxes out later (by filling out some kind of form), or are taxes taken out automatically (like sales tax) and I would only get something like $450 extra in my account?

Thanks

Re: Minimum number of shares you can buy?
 

Instead of looking at the number of shares you have to buy look at the $$$ you are investing into the company. Look up the symbol for BRK-A.

Re: Minimum number of shares you can buy?
 

[ QUOTE ]
How about taxes on selling a stock? Say I buy $3500 in Dell and the next day it goes up to $4000.

1). Is there a fee to sell this the next day because I didn't own it longer than a day (in addition to the $7 Scottrade transaction fee)?

2). The $500 profit I make, I will pay taxes on this I assume. Do I get the $500 immediately and take the taxes out later (by filling out some kind of form), or are taxes taken out automatically (like sales tax) and I would only get something like $450 extra in my account?

Thanks


[/ QUOTE ]
You will have to pay the tax april 15th depending on your tax bracket.

Re: Minimum number of shares you can buy?
 

Vind, profits from short term holdings are taxed as ordinary income... long term holdings are taxed at the capital gains rate. Taxes are paid when you file. An active day trader may be filing quarterly estimated tax reports.

For comparison, a normal 9-5er is paying taxes whenever they get a check, on average every 2 weeks.

Re: Minimum number of shares you can buy?
 

Why in the world are you thinking about buying individual stocks when you are admittedly still a novice?

Why not give your money to an intelligent mutual fund manager for now, start a "pretend" account with individual stocks (marketocracy or yahoo will let you do this), and then only take the risks when you're ready to take them?

-web

Re: Minimum number of shares you can buy?
 

For the past few weeks I've had a Yahoo portfolio, looking at a few stocks and such. I just want to get my feet wet and buy a few stocks, just to "start". I have a total savings of around $50,000. I took $4000 and put it into a Roth IRA at Scottrade (still need to decide what Index Fund I want to put it in) and put $5000 into another Scottrade account to experiment with the stock market. With my remaining $35,000 I am putting it into a new Met Life 3.5% Money Market account.

I'm not going crazy with the stock market, I'm just taking around 10% of my money and trying to get familiar with everything. Once I feel more comfortable with things and/or talk to a financial advisor, I'll look into investing another $25,000 from my remaining $35,000.

Re: Minimum number of shares you can buy?
 

[ QUOTE ]
put $5000 into another Scottrade account to experiment with the stock market

[/ QUOTE ]

Suggested game plan...

Find 5 stocks in the $10-$20 range that you like and allocate roughly 1K to each. That would be roughly 50-100 shares each... and daily volatility should feel roughly like you are multitabling the .50/1 limit tables.