I want to buy one share of Target stock for a gift. What is the cheapest way to do so?
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I suggest you call your bank and ask them how much they would charge to buy and deliver one share of stock for you. You may find that is the least expensive solution.
You can try some of the lowcost e-traders like scott trade, etrade or morningstar. Why do you want to buy one share anyway? It's not even gonna be worth it to pay the brokerage fee and all that good stuff they charge you. I don't trade online but I'm pretty sure to open an account and maintain that balance will cost much greater than how much you might gain on that one share of stock..
If the gift is gonna be used for a class or for trading experience only, I recommend registering an account at a simulation trading website. I think Yahoo might have something like that. You can find it pretty easily if you type trading simulation account in google.
While the idea is nice it is not practical. About 56 bucks for the one share, at least 7 bucks and a bunch of paperwork to open an account to buy it, and then what does the recipient do with it? It gets even less practical when the quarterly dividend (0.9%) is declared. After one year the total owned is 1.036 shares. Yes that can be sold just as easily as 1.000 shares can be bought but.. Good intentions do not always translate well.
the problem you have is you want a stock certificate with it that is why the prices are in the $100 range. (average price of a certificate is $40) . The above suggestion doesn't take your case into full light. All you want is one share to give as a gift. Scottrade requires a $500 minimum and others go much higher.
Makes for a nice gift and Target is better overall than Wally World right now I would stick with your original options.
TradeKing ($4.95)
First, the cheap brokerages will not be a good source. Part of what makes them cheap is that most of the trades don't require the full registration or issuance of stock certificates. I don't know about today, but a few years ago Scottrade (which I use) wanted $50 if you wanted the stock certificate. Usually, when you trade stocks at cheap brokerages, they buy and sell from a block of stock and just keep a list of how many of those shares belong to whom. They sometimes can give almost instant trades by being the exchange, customer A says sell 100 and customer B says buy 100. The stock is still setting on the books, it is just that the current market price is charged (plus commission) to customer B and paid (less commission) to customer A.
The trick is to get ONE share to trade to you. It used to be the domain of an odd-lot broker who assembles a bunch of odd shares, for a price. That service is why you will have to pay extra.
Try www.sharebuilder.com Certificates are a thing of the past and less you want to pay big bucks to get.
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