Hi, my name is Julie Asti, and I'm a Certified Financial Planner, with Asti Financial Management, and the topic I'm going to be talking about today, is how to buy stocks. There are really two main ways to buy stocks. The first, is what's called a DRIP, a dividend reinvestment plan. Those are offered by large Fortune 500 companies, your IBM's, GE, AT&T, and the benefit of buying into a direct investment with one of these companies, is that you do not have to pay commissions, so you can open an account directly with the firm,through their investor relations department, and you can buy stocks at the market value, and you don't have to pay any investment commissions. The stock is held by the custodian of the company, and you're issued stock shares, and if you want to engage in buying more, you just contact the company to buy more shares. If you want to sell, you contact the company to sell the shares, on the open market, at the current market price. That's a way that will save you commissions. The second way to buy stocks, is to buy them through, traditionally through a discount brokerage.You can also buy it through a full service brokerage, although there are cost differences with those. With a discount brokerage, I'm talking about a Schwab,a Fidelity, a TD AMERITRADE. What you would do, is open up a brokerage account. You would need to deposit funds into the account, say a thousand dollars, and through the discount brokerage, either online or using their customer service number, you would call up and you would put in a buy, a purchase order for let's say, a hundred shares of General Electric. Schwab will go out on the open market, on your behalf. They'll purchase one hundred shares for you. They'll tell you what the market price is that they were able to get. They'll go ahead and deduct that amount from your account, and they will also deduct a trading commission. With a discount brokerage or full service brokerage, there is always a commission to either buy or sell stock. Discount brokerage commissions can range from five dollars, to maybe thirty dollars. A full service brokerage, like a Morgan Stanley, or a Smith Barney, is more expensive, because you're paying for an adviser, who can kind of help walk you through the transaction, if you need more assistance.Those trades normally range anywhere from maybe fifty dollars, up to maybe a hundred and fifty dollars, on a buy and a sell. That would be how to buy and sell a stock.I'm Julie Asti, certified financial planner with Asti Financial Management, and if you would like more information about my company, you can visit me at www.astifinancial.com. Thank you.
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