Question about selling my stocks online?
Question:
In general, what do I need to know about selling my stocks online? Do they sell for what they're selling for if a broker sold them? Do I just send a sell order and they're automatically sold, or do I have to wait for someone to buy them? Thanks
Answer:
There are no hidden costs. I have been a customer for a while of TD Ameritrade.
Now here is what you do. You open your account with TD Ameritrade and fill out a form that gives them the authority to transfer your account from your current institution to them. Your current institution may charge you a fee to perform the transfer, but you do not have to be concerned with the certificates.
You can sell at market and they will be sold almost immediately or you can place and order to sell at a particular price and state that the order is good until cancelled. If the stocks are actively traded, a market order is just find. If they are not actively traded, you will want to protect yourself by placing at order in at a price. If they do not sell, you can change the order.
Before you place your sell order, you can check the prices at which the securities are selling at and the price range for the day and place the order how ever you think best. I normally place my orders as day orders at a particular price, just to protect myself from unexpected market moves. I actually like TDAmeritrades trading system. It works very well. Sometimes my orders are executed within a matter of seconds. Sometimes they sit there for a while if the price has dropped suddenly but they almost always are executed by the end of the day.
I had only one problem ever entering a sell order. That was on a pink sheet stock. The on line platform would not accept the order. I had to call it in. The the broker executed it immediately and charged me the fee for having entered the order on line after I explained the problem.
All you will need to do is open an account with a discount broker. You will need to deposit something (money or stocks) to do that.
You then will use your user name and password to go into your account and you are ready to buy or sell. Generally you will be told the quote immediately before the transaction. From there you can commit (or not) to the transaction.
Easy as pie (if you know what you are doing)
once you have the account open and the stocks are in your portfolio, they're worth the market price... you submit a sell order and within seconds (assuming you do this during the normal trading hours), they're sold.. there are always buyers... Obviously, you'll be wanting to watch the stock price for a few weeks before you sell, try to sell when it makes a swing upwards, of course.. I'd actually suggest using a limit order to make sure you know what you'll be selling for.. ie.. right now the stock price is 48.21, but it's been moving a buck or two up and down for several days.. set a limit for $50 (good until cancel).. then next time the price gets up to 50$, they will automatically sell at that price whether you're around or not...
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