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Anonymous Coward
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2015-12-12, 06:28

I've been in the stock market for a while, but am not a regular trader.

I would shop around and just look for the brokerage service that has the lowest fees. If you're going to make most or all of the decisions yourself, there is no reason to pay more. I've had an account with TD Ameritrade for a while, but I think the fee is twice as much as my other account at Merrill Lynch. There's a $5.00 difference, and right now I'm not very active, so I don't care much about that now.

I don't have much to invest, so I'm not really looking to gamble. I've done a bit of that with companies like Webvan and something called US Ammunition, but didn't lose that much, and don't speculate on small companies and start-ups anymore.

I started while I was in the Navy at a place in New London, but that was so long ago, that I don't remember why. (It didn't have anything to do with enlistment bonuses or anything like that.) I just found a broker and opened an account. At the time, my strategy was finding companies with a dividend reinvestment program, like Texas Utilities. (At the time, it was the beginning of the internet and there were no online brokerage services.)

Maybe the luckiest I've gotten was Apple at something like $8 or $9, but I sold at maybe $35. I wanted to buy at $7-1/2, but I was in Italy at the time, and everything was still done by telephone and mail.

Lately I just look for big companies that have had a loss due to bad news. An example of this is Home Depot when it was hacked. If I had any money, I would have put some into Volkswagen. But I've always had a long term outlook, so didn't sell my Home Depot, which is still up from when I bought it, but probably not as much as it was a few months ago.

I used to read the Wall Street Journal, but now all the information you need will be available through the online brokerages at no cost, unless you want their in-depth reports and stock rating services. With the print newspaper, I'd look at the loss and gain leaders and the high yield (total investment) leaders and do some research into companies on those lists.

I'm probably not the type of investor you want to talk to, though -- not willing to take a big risk since I'm unemployed/retired and right now am month-to-month with expenses. In general, all my remaining investments have grown (mutual funds are probably up maybe 10X in 20 to 25 years, which means through the dot-com bust and recent collapse) and stocks not so much (probably less than double with mostly gains and some losses (like Motorola, I think, and probably Volkswagen from 10-15 years ago). I did well with the dividend reinvestment stocks (I don't know if they even have those anymore), but had to give those up getting myself through school. I'm really out of touch with the practical handling of money since until recently, I didn't realize that savings accounts no longer pay 5-1/4% interest.

Last edited by Anonymous Coward : 2015-12-13 at 01:36.
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