please recommend brokerage service

cmore

cmore

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I plan to begin dabbling in the stock market. I will be only doing
buy and hold type deals, no day trading.
Does anyone have a brokerage they recommend for the novice?
thanks
pc
 
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Been using Scottrade for the past 15 years or so for my IRA, Roth IRA and cash account. Reliable and easy to use streaming and trading platform. Decent research tools. $7 trades.
 
Trading is a risky bizness. I wouldn't do it unless I had a lot of time to devote to research. Too many people out there with way more experience than me watching the market and moving money. Even the folks that manage investments use funds and their managers to stay out of trouble. It's like a horse race, some can pick the winners but most can't.
 
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There are many gun brokers you can choose from, but any will do as long as you purchase high-quality investment-grade Smith and Wesson revolvers and keep them in your safe.

I'm sorry, you said "stock market". Well, the same holds true for stocks, or 'grips' as some call them. Just make sure that your safe is humidity controlled. That will keep them in good shape.
 
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I've never used this particular service, but I note that Costco has a
brokerage service. It looks to have lower fees than the big boys.

If you want to dollar cost average, periodic trades have a fee of only $2 per trade.

Go to http://www.costco.com/services.html and click on "Online Investing"
 
Since your intention is to buy and hold, I don't think the brokerage matters that much. (If you were intending to buy and sell frequently, trading fees would matter more.) I'd pick a big, established one.

I have an account with Fidelity. Hardly ever touch it. Works for me.
 
buy and hold, use a better house like Fidelity or Merrill Lynch

if you are day trading then like has been said Scottrade is a good one.

DOW went over 18,000, do not know how much bubble pie is left.

Fidelity has some tools that other online trading houses do not have, the software is the best I have seen and the ability to deposit and trade immediately is a good thing. Not much waiting.
 
For the last five years I've used Fidelity and have been very pleased with the company, if not my assigned contact. Fidelity has great research tools, and trades are easy to do online. I've stayed with mutual-funds in the medical area, with two exceptions one stocks and another mutual-fund. Over the last four years I've achieved a steady 9% increase. Good but not great returns, but I've avoided any serous downturns.

at 66, I've decided not to put any more serious cash into the market, and I'm planning on holding for 5 - 10 years, before I think about starting to cashing out.
 
Dabble is not a good word to describe investing.
You want to go slow, steady and conservative.
I prefer no-load mutual funds and ETFs - Exchange Trades Funds.
Lately I have been buying NM muni bonds.
As mentioned above, the market is at an all time high.
The next event coming is the FED raising the interest rate. It's been at near zero for a long time!
When will that happen? The FED is non-political.
Ok. It will be just after the next election, IMO.
So get an account with an online broker, I'm with TDAMERITRADE, start reading, and invest slowly.
And keep investing. You cannot time the market!
If (when) it goes down, keep buying.
Your money will buy more, everything is on sale!
 
COSTCO doesn't have their own investing service, they just link you up with Sharebuilder... not necessarily a bad thing, I used to use ShareBuilder but have moved on to TDAmeriTrade now and I like it better. SB is a good choice for small, regular investments in a chosen stock I think.
 
Thank you all for your time and advice. I may end up with Fidelity, since
I have my 401K there. By dabble I mean start small and go slow.
I plan to use Motley Fool and Robert Williams for guidance. Anyone
used them?
thanks again
pc
 
These days, you can often contact a companies shareholder relations (or apply on the internet) and get in a dividend investment plan and buy stock directly from the company. I purchased 35 stocks this way back in the Reagan era. All but one did exceptionally well. There is plenty of free research on the internet for picking stocks often better than what you pay so called professionals for. The money saved on brokers fees multiplied my returns. Good Luck!
 
Rick, that was the smart way to buy back in the olden days when commissions were $100 minimum, even if the broker was nothing more than an order taker. Still a viable alternative but $10 unlimited e-trades gives more options. I remember when TD Waterhouse started discount brokerage with $39 phone trades and how revolutionary that was. I've been with them (now TD Ameritrade) since the early 90s and have had experience with Merrill Lynch, Advest, Computershare as well as company dividend re-investment programs. I highly recommend TDA and would definitely pass on Merrill Lynch, famous for 12 page statements and very practiced in fee obfuscation. Likewise Motley Fool. I paid a bit of attention to them back in the y2k .com boom/bust and never learned anything worth knowing from the brothers Gardner.

I'd recommend Investor's Business Daily as a paid tout sheet and then use all the free tools that come with the TDA acct. If you've never read Benjamin Graham's 'The Intelligent Investor' it is well worth your time. Gives the best explanation/definition of Mr. Market's behavior and the principle of value investing that I've found, even if it is 65 years since it was first published. Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger are disciples.


Take a good look at high yield exchange traded funds (mutual funds that trade like stocks with no load and no incentive to churn) while you are doing research on individual stocks. Understand that you are late to the party so proceed with caution. There are still good buys but, like guns, don't buy no ugly stocks. ;)

I like Dogs of the Dow as a system and have used a modified version since before I'd ever heard of DotD. I like stocks that pay dividends and those that have a long track record of meeting their dividend obligations. When you are working on house money then maybe take a flyer on some more speculative big risk big reward stocks.

I like Vectren Energy (VVC) and Ford (F). Both are paying a little higher % than normal and when the % gets back in line the share price must go up. That is the basic principle of DotD.
 
People thought the stock market was too high to buy in 1972 at Dow 1065. Then they thought it was too high in 1983 at Dow 1209. Then they thought it was too high in 1991 at Dow 3004. Then they thought it was too high in 1996 at Dow 6547. Then they thought it was too high in 1999 at Dow 11,014. Then they thought it was too high to buy in 2013 at Dow 14,000.
Today the Dow hovers around 18,000. It will go up and then back down. Then it will go up again then down again.
For most people trying to time the market doesn't work. Buy and hold. Collect and reinvest the dividends. Capitol appreciation and reinvested dividends will compound over years to build wealth. Don't sell when the market goes down!
Use high quality low cost mutual funds with no load. Check out Vanguard Total Stock Market Index.
Investing is simple and fun. Investing is made out to sound scary and complicated so you will think you need an expensive "advisor" to save you from financial ruin. There is no doubt you should do your research. Good free information is is abundant. Perhaps buying an hour or two of time from a professional can be helpful if just starting out. Just my two centavos.
 
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Agreed that "dabble"isn't a word to use.It suggests a strategy little more than throwing a dart at a list of companies.

I think that the average investor is best served by utilizing the various index funds offered by Vanguard.
 
Fidelity. I like that fact that they have 85 commission free Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) that trade like stocks. You can buy and sell one share at a time and pay NOTHING. Their ETF's cover the market very well (sectors, markets, all the common indexes, bonds, international, treasuries, REITs), some are Fidelity funds, some are iShare.

Other firms have free ETF's, also. But I like Fidelity, and besides the free trades, it costs me nothing to have an account with them. I've converted all of my Mutual Funds over to ETF's and think it's the best way to go.
 
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