Etrade question?

Question

My father has set me up an etrade account and has invested some of my money. My question here is, with trading fees and such, is it feasible for me to play with just a couple hundred dollars in some cheap stocks?

In the account there is only a few thousand invested already and i would like to make at least 5-8 trades per week

Answer 1

I have a etrade account too, yes you can do whatever you want with your money.  Be careful though if you invest 100 dollars in a stock you have to pay 12.99 to buy it and 12.99 to sell it, so to not lose money it has to go up 26%.  Also when you buy those cheap stocks or penny stocks they are big risk.

You could go to one of those sites were you can use play money to buy and sell stock to get some expierience at it.

Answer 2

If you trade 5 to 8 times per week, your commission per trade will drop down to $9.99 after your first quarter, which makes it pretty economical to play with small amounts. You can find some cheaper trading sites, but you are getting what you pay for - Etrade has good reporting and other features that will be useful, and it is pretty user friendly.

Answer 3

I just opened my own account 2 months ago and learning that some people use tools like bettertrades/or invest tools. I have a scottrade account and they have their own tools. what these tools do is give you a better accurate picture on where a stock may be headed. There's charts like the stochastics, volume, MACD ect. Not one chart by it'self can tell you where a stock will be headed but several stocks used together can give you a good idea what's happening to a stock. To answer your question , yes, you can play with a couple hundred.

Answer 4

E-trade charges per trade and the trade is not based on the price of the stock,  so you can trade low priced (not under 5) or high priced.

The question should be leverage, and trading round lots,

You can buy more share with lower priced stocks, than higher priced.

If you only "playing" around with a few hundred bucks, you not in the driver seat to demand or even expect lower commissions.  

Don't forget your not trading in quality, only quantity.

Everything considered most firms will be about the same