HOW TO BUY STOCKS ONLINE FOR FREE
One of the advantages of online stock investing is the low fees that most brokers charge for buying and selling stock. With full line brokers, you can count on being charged at least $100 per trade of 100 or more shares. Online though, the fees are much lower and this has made the stock market more accessible to the common person.
As low as fees are, is there such a thing as a free lunch in the world of online stock investing? Are there online stock brokers that will give you totally free trades? It never hurts to look for free things and this applies to the stock market as well.
There is one bit of warning though, and that is if you are looking for how to buy stocks for free online, there is a chance you should not be investing in stocks at all. In other words, if you don’t have the money or the desire to pay the fees, maybe stock investing is not the right thing for you.
The answer to whether you can find free stock trading online is “no”. There is no online broker that I am aware of that will give you unlimited stock trades for free without some sort of catch or requirements being met. You must always read the fine print and the conditions of every offer and if you do, you will find that there are always conditions to be met before anything is free.
There is one online stock company that does offer 10 free trades a month if you keep a balance over $25,000 in the account or if you make more than 25 trades a month. The problem with that is that if you have more than $25,000 in your account, you probably won’t care that much about 10 free trades and anyone who makes more than 25 trades a month is showing signs of just being a day trader and not a real investor.
There is one way to buy some stocks commission free and it is called dividend reinvestment. There are about 1000 American companies with DRP or DRIP plans that allow you to reinvest the dividend money you get and buy more of their stock for free. This means you can buy x amount of shares of a company and get more shares through the years for free with all the dividends they pay out. This will allow you to dollar cost average the purchase of more shares as they will be bought automatically at whatever the price is at the time you have enough to buy shares.
There are also a growing number of companies that will let you buy additional stock from them for free. These usually require you to already own stock in the company but this type of option of buying more stock is something your broker will probably never tell you about.
You can sign up to many of the top 10 online stock brokers and not be charged more than $10 per trade. If you feel that amount is too much, it is possible that maybe you are trading too often or you don’t have enough money to be investing in stocks. Or maybe you just want a good deal but now days good deals usually come with strings attached. Buying stocks online for free is something that is possible but it does come with some drawbacks so make sure you read any agreement and fine print before you sign up.
