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Open an account with any stockbroker and they will purchase the shares "on the market" and hold them for you until you want to sell. They charge for this servic
by mcherm 11y ago
Open an account with any stockbroker and they will purchase the shares "on the market" and hold them for you until you want to sell. They charge for this service so you want one that caters to beginning investors and has low fees for the kind of purchase you want.
Personally, I use Charles Schwab, which is one of the largest US consumer brokerages and has a pretty good reputation. For beginners I usually recommend ShareBuilder (no, wait: recently renamed "Capital One Investing") as they have lots of features for beginners including purchase plans with little to no fees for small amounts and no maintainance fees. But (full disclosure) I may be a biased source: I work for Capital One.
- omginternets 11y agoThanks for the info! I take it there's no DIY approach here, and that for all intents and purposes, I must go through a broker?
- karanbhangui 11y agoOnline discount brokers like Etrade, Schwab, Ameritrade, etc are about as DIY as it gets. Load up funds from your bank account and pick your stocks! Notably, Robinhood is a new startup that doesn't charge any fees and has nice mobile apps: https://robinhood.com/ https://robinhood.com/
- mcherm 11y agoTo "DIY" without going through a broker, just find a friend who owns stock certificates and have them sell it to you. I believe there would be follow-on paperwork where you inform the company of who the new stockholder is so you can receive communications. Absolutely NOBODY does it this way. The closest that exists is that a few companies (often utility companies) still have programs from many decades ago where they will sell stock directly to the public. Finally, you could (theoretically) become a broker yourself and purchase stock directly on the exchanges.