Please help my son...very basic question

[krishan]

[ QUOTE ]

Should I use a free site? Are there any big drawbacks on these sites?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd just go ahead and open a zecco account for him. You'd gain a bit of knowledge on free trade sites while he would be able to buy a diversified portfolio.

Krishan

[Scorpion Man]

Dammit. No Zecco for people under 18 yrs of age.

[Lunger]

This article

http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/a...lionaire/18293

recomends using Sharebuilder or MyStockFundKids for buying stocks for kids.

[iamastud]

Many companies offer direct stock purchase and dividend reinvestment plans. Some offer no fees on additional stock purchases after the initial puchase has been made, and dividends get reininvested automatically.

There are three major companies that handle the dividend reinvestment programs of the major companies. They are Computershare, Mellon and Bank of New York. If you go to their web sites you will see which companies they represent.

Dividend reinvestment and periodic reinvestment into different accounts is a great way and usually a low risk way(due to price averaging) to create a long term growth vehicle, that if started young, will be worth into the millions when one is older.

[Esection]

Op -

Set him up with a "play" money account at marketwatch (CBS) or some other virtual trading/investing portal. once he has a clue to what he is doing, then check out Scottrade.

$7 trades (realtime), limit, stop, market, all those jazzy order types included.

some excellent research, both proprietary and non (ie S&P research reports etc),

its really easy to get money on there

real time quotes.

no maintenance fees.

only $500 to open an account, minimum deposit of 100 after that (if you wanted to dep. more, it has to be at least 100 each time).

Def. check it out - im not sure why it hasnt been mentioned before this.

Check out DRIPs too...

[gull]

Yeah, Scottrade is pretty good. If you want, I can send you a referral that earns each of us three free trades.

However, in my opinion SogoInvest is better. It's only $3 per trade ($1 for first 90 days). MB Trading also has very low commissions.

[almostbusto]

another newbie question:

if i signed up at scottrade, or any other place really, and make one stock purchase for 10,000$. then don't do anything for the next ten years. how much will i have paid in fees? just the 7$ for the initial purchase? or are there yearly fees? i can't seem to get a straight enough answer from the website

[gull]

Yeah, just $7. Many places (definitely not all) don't have maintenence fees. It's rarer though to have no fees for IRAs. Scottrade has no fees for both.

http://scottrade.com/online_trading_...e_services.asp

[Scorpion Man]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah, just $7. Many places (definitely not all) don't have maintenence fees. It's rarer though to have no fees for IRAs. Scottrade has no fees for both.

http://scottrade.com/online_trading_...e_services.asp

[/ QUOTE ]

Just asked my son...gave him choice of play or real with me topping it up later...he took real.

And you can hold the comments about him being dumb for choosing to pay a commission...i would have done the same thing.

[gull]

I don't mean to insult anyone. It's my belief that the average 9-year-old cannot beat the market, that's all.

How would he choose not to pay a commission?