SeCsTaC

So I have 5k and I'm going to give it to my mom so she can buy stocks for me in AMD. So I was wondering how to go about doing this. I've never been in stocks before, and I thought this was a good way to try. So yeah what are some online websites and how do they work?

jlspeed29

amd? hmm.....
scottrade.com

fidelity

tdwaterhouse


basically anything on money.com


scot trade has trade commissions of like $7/trade i think...

good luck


what happened to diversification?


do you know something we dont?

gdfthr

I've been using etrade for the last few years. It is pretty simple to use and any time you have a question their on-line help is very good.

But like jlspeed29 said, why amd? personally I think Intel is a better bet plus they offer a dividend which I like. But to each their own. Good Luck

yunginTL

etrade hands down, especially if u plan on gettin into daytrading lateron

SeCsTaC

Actually I don't know shit about the stock market. I just know that AMD kicked Intel's ass not too long ago, and they were at $40 a share about a year ago, and now they're tanking. It's at about $13 a share and it seems stable at that mark. I'm sure AMD can pull itself back up in the long run ~6 months. Just my prediction anyway.

Anyway how does etrade work? I put money in, and then buy the stocks online? What is daytrading?

Oh yeah couple questions.

1. How long does it take for a transaction (Buy/Sell) to take place?
2. Do you have to pay taxes if you win?
3. Anyone else got any recommendations for stocks?

4. How do you check if a company has Dividends or not? Also can you check how much they pay and how often for dividens?

Thanks in advance!

gdfthr

Sorry in advance for the long post but these things are somewhat difficult to explain in a few words.

You pretty much sumed it up about how etrade works. Just pay attention to the contract when you sign up as far as how much trading commisions are (Etrade's fee for making the trades) and if there is any account minimum fee. (when I signed up there was a monthly fee of $12 for accounts with less than $10K)

Daytrading is when you pretty much buy and sell a stock in the same day. You are planning that a stock is going to make a modest return in a short period of time, so you buy on research of good news and bail out before the end of the trading day at what you feel is the peak price. People can make a lot of money this way but you need to dedicate a lot of time to research and constant monitoring.

Transaction times all depend on what type of order you are planning to make. Short answer, not long. Long answer: you can place an order to buy XYZ @ $10/share. When it hits that mark your bid goes out and looks for someone who is looking to sell their shares at the same price. Or you can just say I want to buy XYZ at whatever the share price is at the time you execute the order. And the same goes for selling.

You do have to pay taxes if you make a profit, and the percentage you pay depends on when you sell. If you sell a stock that you have owned for less than one year you pay short term capitol gains tax which I believe is taxed at your normal fed income tax rate on top of you state income tax rate. If you own a stock for more than a year that was profitable then you pay long term capitol gains which is taxed federaly at 15% and then you pay you normal state income tax.

As far as recomendations go I like my United States Steel (X) Las Vegas Sands (LVS) and I love my Google (GOOG). All three stocks have doubled for me in just over a years time. But in all seriousness don't jump on a stock because someone else says they are great, take their advice and do some reasearch.

You can find out about dividends in a company by finding their dividend yield. For example my US Steel's yield is .77% of the closing price as of today. So at a closing price of $110, they pay out 77 cents per share for the year. Now normally companies issue dividens per quarter so I would get 19.25 cents per share every three months. And this money can either go back into your account or you can put it into a D.R.I.P (Dividend Re-Investment Plan) where Etrade with automatically take that money and buy more shares with it. By the way, dividends are taxed as long term capitol gains.

SeCsTaC

Wow very informative gdfthr! +rep for you!

Quick question, the second you hit sell, does it sell the stock instantly or do you have to wait a few minutes to find a buyer?

Also what's an eportfolio?

fuzzy02CLS

iTrader: (2)

I work for a daytrading firm. 500 traders in our office, plus 100's more in our main NY offices. We don't trade online just in house with own our software. Direct market access, instantaneous trade fills.
However, there's a $25Kmin to open an account so that's out....

So yeah I would go with an online broker. Etrade, Scotttrade 1 of those, & yeah watch out for fee's. There's other fee's that are regulation like sec fee's. You have to pay them by law.
I would go with ameratrade. They have the best trading backbone & have far better order fills.

gdfthr

Yes you have to wait to find a buyer who is looking to pick up shares at the price you are offering them.

Your e-portfolio is your online portfolio of all your buy/sell transactions, profit and loss reports, dividends issued, taxable income for a particular fiscal year etc.

Oh by the way when I was telling you about taxes, you can use a loss towards a gain as long as they were both sold during a short term or a long term capitol gains period. In other words if you bought and sold ABC within the same calender year(Which would be considered short term) and took a loss. And you also bought and sold XYZ in the same calender year for a profit, you can claim your losses of ABC towards your profits of XYZ to differ your tax burden.

supaman8118

If you don't know much about the market I think you should cut your 5k down to about 2.5k. And I believe that will still allow you to get the free trades from etrade. I use Scottrade so i'll answer your questions based on that.
1.) once your funds are in the online account buying happens almost instantly when you place an order. You can also do orders over the phone if your in a rush and can't get to the internet, but I don't suggest it cause its like a $25 commission compared to $7. Selling happens almost instantly too but the money will take about 3 days before it is settled so you can trade with it again (you don't want to trade with unsettled funds!)
2.) you do have to pay taxes on your earnings so don't go spending all of what you make. about 3 months ago the IRS tried to hit me with you own us $386 from stock profits in 05! it is not clearly 07! I ended up not having to pay anything but 200 to my expensive tax lady who fixed it for me. But the taxes are like 15% i think and worth paying for what you can make.
3.) Since I'm not really trading right now, I jus have sears holding co. for the long term, I'm not gonna give you a recomendation I haven't done my homework on. I'm more focused on my in dash CD/DVD/TV i'm getting to be doing the stock research.
4.) Go to yahoo.com and click the finance link, put in the stock and you can see how much of a dividend has been paid and when they were paid.