How should I buy my stocks?
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Some maybe many of the brokers that you talk with are in the business of selling stock. They have things they want to peddle. So it can be a disadvantage to your well being to follow their advice. Many of the on line brokers do have representatives that you can talk with. The two that I deal with do. TD Waterhouse and Fidelity. They will charge you a higher commission to talk to a broker (order taker in this case). I am sure there are good, knowledgable brokers out there but your chances of finding one are not real good. The good brokers have a customer base that trades millions of dollars at a time. They are not particularly interested in nickle dime trade.
Perhaps to start you might think about a no load mutul fund. Go to Yahoo Finance and use their tools to find funds that have a high Morningstar rating, at least a 4 star and expenses of not more than 1.5% That strategy will minimize your risks, but not eliminate them. Back in 2000-2, most funds lost money, some a lot of money. But they did not loose as much as those folks that invested in Enron or Delta or United.
The trick to minimizing risk is to diversify, not only among companies buy also across political boundaries. However, the more diversified one is the closer to the market norm will be ones returns. For that reason index funds have become the current rage. The theory being that it is too difficult to beat the market. 70% of mutual funds do not beat the market.
Though I do have mutual funds, I prefer to take my chances on being able to pick the best companies to invest in myself. Sometimes I make good picks. Other times they are disasters. But I have only myself to blame. I like it like that.
Sorry about the misspelled words. Spell checker does not seem to be working at the moment.
I don't know where you are on the planet. I'm in Orange County NY, where there is a very well run credit union. That's where I have my savings and checking accounts.
This institution has a financial planning division. I met with their representative, discussed my long term and short term goals.
As a result, I selected the funds offered by this financial planner. I have access to a person and access to the fund allocation, which means I can make adjustments if my circumstances change.
This is one possibility.
Finding a financial planner is hard. I had one for over ten years until he got so big that I could not really afford the commissions.
I found him by interviewing a bunch of people and learning how he made his money - not by selling me stuff, but based on the value of my account. I also looked for personal traits - did he answer calls, was he prompt at meetings or did he make me wait? How well could he answer questions in plain language.
start reading.. bobbrinker.com raylucia.com
both good sources for learning
If you do not want to use sharebuilders.com I suggest you to open a brokerage account at scottrade.com with just $500.00
If you don't want to lose more money you can hire me as your Financial Advisor.
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