:confused:

Other than co-authoring an assortment of essays many years ago, Warren Buffett has never written a book.
If he had, he'd of been promoting it at our annual shareholder meetings, which he never has......

Good luck anyway!:)

Again, you need to consult a financial advisor.

I don't have enough money for them to give a crap.

Hattie, a good start is a savings account with a decent interest rate with a $500 investment the simple cost of the trade is going to eat up any profits that you may have the gains may be small......but its a gain. If you want to "own" a piece of a company check out share builder and you can buy small pieces of stock at a reasonable price, get yourself on a small program of depositing $100 a month and watch it grow. Personally I think you should devote whatever money you have to buy leads and knock on doors, if you be aggressive with purchased leads you would easily get your money back. The only 100% measure I can think of to insure success is get an education and work your ass off, that is the only common denominator I have seen.

Pulling gains out of the stock market right now it tougher than you think, if you want a good ROI buy a POS fixer upper and live in it. You may have to live in a tough 'hood but at least its a start.

True, thats what everyone is saying.

I'm not giving up, not by a long shot. I just started working and calling expireds last week, no luck yet, but I'm confident I'll get something soon. Eventualy something has to pan out, if you do it enough by defualt!

Working hard, check
Education, in progress.
flat broke, check.:D

I need to invest in advertising to help bring in leads.

I want to buy a house, as soon as I have some cash. Its amazing all the deals out their. I can get for like $250k a POS house on a street full of $700k-$1m homes. Its the worst house on the street by a long shot, but its on a decent lot.

Now that would be a good deal!

You have to get started somewhere, and E*Trade is one reasonable choice. Ameritrade is the other. You will be hit with a service fee at E*Trade if your balance is below $20,000 and that tends to lead people toward Ameritrade.

E*Trade now has "global trading" and allows you to convert your weakening dollars into a more "hard" currency like Euros. The return on doing that might beat a savings account with its typical interest. You can still get in under $1.50 per Euro. :)

I have not converted any dollars yet as I have not been able to select anything to invest in with Euros. The French and German markets can be traded. I'd like to find something rather secure like ticker TIP is in the US market, but hold it in Euros. Seems more stable than holding TIP in dollars.

:)

Ken300D

P.S. You should look into the concept of the Direct Stock Purchase program a lot of companies have set up. Dividends are re-invested automatically, and you can get set up for automatic monthly withdrawals. In many cases, the company pays all the investment costs, and in some cases will offer a discount off the market price of a few percent. A DRIP in a REIT has been my best steady performer.

That's too bad. I thought you were going to buy a share of Google today..?

Hatt, no one has answered the question poted in the title of this thread. In the time you have wasted posting, reading and responding to the advise, you could have gone (probably walked both ways) to a bank and had an account open by now.

There is a lot of financial bsing on the internet--horrible place to get financial advise from individuals. However, if you insist on using the tool, when I typed in the title to your thread on google, about a thousand different options including minimum amounts, ect.... popped up.

I did, Sharebuilder has a $4.00 minimum deposit.

That doesn't answer the question of "How do I open a small stock trading account." To me anyway.

Sorry go to www.sharebuilder.com -------------> enter information ----> deposit money -------------trade.

Finally, an answer:D

I was already did a Google search and got a million hits. I was looking for advice like, I use such and such, and it works good, and the fee's are low.

Trading fees and performance are one thing. How about other services? How much research material is available and do they charge for it? What's their policy and history of accommodating you if press the wrong button while trading? The sell button is awfully close to the buy button and it can be catastrophic to sell something you don't own. How good is their phone support? I don't even know what else to ask.

Is there a Consumer Reports review of on-line brokerages?

Sixto
87 300D

Sometimes it easier to have a small brokerage account if you start by putting a lot of money in it.

Somebody once defined "stock broker" as "Someone who invests your money for you until it's all gone."

They're not really THAT bad, but sometimes the definition will feel apt.