If you buy stocks, please drop in

[Clutch]

I am looking at two companies to buy stock in. I would like to buy some shares Monday or Tuesday. I am a total n00b to this, so please bare with me. Once I sign up with a site like Ameritrade, or one of the others, do I just tell them what company I want stock in? Like I tell them I want 30 shares of company xxx, and send them the money for it? I see places that offer like $8 trades, what is a trade? Like I pay them $8, to sell a share or something?

[Armo]

my teacher is getting into stocks, he owns a couple dozen shares of surrious ( sp ) satalite radio and theve gone up alot, from like $3 to like $9 a share, but hes just getting his feet wet int he stock market

[Clutch]

That is who I am buying stock in. I see lots of views, but no replies. Guess no one here trades stocks.

[RWB]

It's Sirrus btw... but I hope someone replies to this thread with lots of information, I'd like to get into this myself.

[primesuspect]

Most people our age don't participate in day trading, so..... you're probably not gonna get a huge amount of advice here.. I have a friend who got into day trading by hanging out at http://www.fool.com/ ... now a couple of years later he is really into it. Maybe you should start there.

[maxanon]

When you (day) trade you have to look at the type of investor you are. A trade is a transaction, either selling or buying. You can have front or end load fees or both. A front end fee is that you're charged when you buy shares and end load is when you sell shares. Sometimes a company will charge both (but the costs may be equal to a front and an end). As for the fees you need to read what a transaction means. That fee for 8$ means that the charge for one transaction (although there is a limit to the number of shares allowable in a transaction) and you should read the details. Some companies charge you a fee based on a percentage of the total transaction (with a minimum), but others charge a flat fee - one may be cheaper than the other depending on how much you're buying. If you buy shares from 2 different companies then that most probably counts as 2 transactions (but please read the fine print on the site for accuracy). Also, you normally need to have the money in the account when you make the trade so you need to send the money first.

If you're the type of person to buy/sell a lot you may want to think about the pricing structure. I know that you're just getting into this so it may be difficult to determine what you'll be doing. But just remember its possible to change your brokerage company if you don't like their fee structure. You can even go to a traditional type brokerage later on.

As for info on the company, you have to think of money that you invest as money that you can afford to lose. If you don't you will be up at night worrying about every press release. A tip that I can give you is to get up at least 2 hours before that particular exchange opens up and go to yahoo and type in your ticker symbol. They normally have some inkling on goings on with that company at about 1-2hrs prior to opening (you'll be able ot figure out if its good or bad news by the pre-opening price trend and the volume). Get ready to trade cause sometimes pre-trading can send a stock plummetting (or momentarily sky-rocketing making it a good time to sell). That can either mean a bargain for you (if the news looks to be only hype) to buy more stock making you're overall portfolio price better or a wise sell off with minimal loss. Know your sell price and don't get too greedy by waiting it out, people have been burned counting potential earnings.

Also, remember your capital gains taxes. The government will.

[Justin]

If you just want to buy stock in a company, you will setup an ameritrade account, give them $500, and put in the order to buy X shares of Sirrus, you can do a stock symbol search on Ameritrade and you just put that in. My advice, before you go all crazy with real money, go to http://game.marketwatch.com/Home/default.asp , try that stuff out first, see how you do, then jump in. There are so many things to take into account when investing, the previous post is a brief overview, so try this first, it is still very fun to watch and read, heck, we could even have a team 93 competition on there if we wanted, but most importantly, it is free. You get 1 mill-ion dollars to play with and that should give you an idea of how much you can loose/gain. Let us know how you do.