Free/Cheap Way to Buy Stocks?

[Agamemnon]

Anyone here have a free/cheap way to buy/sell stocks? I bought about $450 of one the other day and my bank hit me with a $26 fee for the purchase... thats already 5-6% of the investment... if they hit me with the same fee when I sell, thats 10-12% of the investment eaten up in fees... is there any easier/cheaper way to do this? Anyone have a service/bank they like? I just use Scotia's online investment functions... its really handy, but if I'm paying through the nose I'd like to know.

Thanks for any advice.

[MoneyGuy]

I'm a financial planner but I don't do this kind of stuff. Good luck (sincerely) buying stocks on your own. I've seen some people do well but I've seen most have it blow up on them. Guys make some money, get over confident and think they're pretty smart, and eventually they crash and burn. You might be different. But you didn't ask for this advice, so I'll tell you that the cheapest way I know of is to use a discount broker if you don't need advice, or don't feel you need advice.

Now I expect to hear from several people who say they buy stocks on their own and make money. I know how this works.

Now don't go taking big risks. And I really do mean the good luck part. I hope you do well.

[SpitFire40]

I see add's for E-Trade quite a bit, but I don't really know anything about this type of stuff.

I want to try out Stocks sometime just for kicks and low cost stocks. To me the stock Market is wayyyy to risky.

edit, Fixed link

[Winsor_Pilates]

I think e trade charges something like $5 a move. I also know some banks will give you a number of free transactions if you open up a discount broker account with them. BMO offered it to me, because of my mosaik CC, but they demand you keep a minimum balance that was out of my range.

[Agamemnon]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

I'm a financial planner but I don't do this kind of stuff. Good luck (sincerely) buying stocks on your own. I've seen some people do well but I've seen most have it blow up on them. Guys make some money, get over confident and think they're pretty smart, and eventually they crash and burn. You might be different. But you didn't ask for this advice, so I'll tell you that the cheapest way I know of is to use a discount broker if you don't need advice, or don't feel you need advice.

Now I expect to hear from several people who say they buy stocks on their own and make money. I know how this works.

Now don't go taking big risks. And I really do mean the good luck part. I hope you do well.

I hear what you're saying... mostly I'm thinking of blue-chip energy industry stuff, I bought some Encana a little while ago and its been doing ok (fluctuating around 60-61). I'm not really looking to double my money over night, just looking for some reasonable growth that has the potential to explode.

Any discount brokerage recommendations? Any idea on how much it would cost to say, buy $500 stock through them?

[Winsor_Pilates]

Originally Posted by Agamemnon

Any discount brokerage recommendations? Any idea on how much it would cost to say, buy $500 stock through them?

IIRC correctly, most of them have a fixed cost up to a certain price (in the thousands). So you're looking at $20-30 per trade, whether it's $500, $100 or $1000

[Agamemnon]

Originally Posted by Winsor_Pilates

IIRC correctly, most of them have a fixed cost up to a certain price (in the thousands). So you're looking at $20-30 per trade, whether it's $500, $100 or $1000

Dang, that sucks... I'm more likely to buy $500 stock than $5000... ah well, maybe I'll just stick with the MF's.

[Winsor_Pilates]

I checked BMO investorline just to see. They charge $25 for trades up to 1000 shares. So that could be a very wide margin of $ amounts, depending on what you're buying.

and you must have a min $5000 in to open up an account.

[firebug]

Most discount brokerages are $25 - $30 per trade (up to about $2,000).

If you are a heavy trader, some will rebate that back down to $10 or so.

Standard rates are steep, but if you are trading $2,000 or more at a time it works out to about 1.5% to buy or sell.

I work for a brokerage (not as a broker) and my cost to trade is $75 per transaction (ouch!).

Best regards,

~bug

[SeeGeeWhy]

Expect about $30/transaction anywhere you go for a standard broker. A good way to reduce this is to see if they offer a discount on transactions processed over the phone (Direct Invest aka RBC does this).

Discount brokers are cheaper but they offer less in terms of service and reporting month to month and in tax season.

The higher end broker you go with, the more you will pay for their service.

[Agamemnon]

Sounds like I'm on the hook for pretty much what I paid... I guess $26 for an electronic transaction is a steal...