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Handspring's problem is too much demand, not enough cash. When's their IPO? (I'm always the last to find these things out...)

Dunno.. I wish they already had one so it could have crashed hardcore with the shipping blunders.. then I could have bought a bunch and made some money.

Anyone going to jump on Palm when it goes IPO? I'd like to.. I had everything ready to get Red Hat but I got lazy (*kicking self hard*)

Is there any web investment service that doesn't require you have thousands of dollars to invest? I would like to dip my foot into the investment waters, but at like 100 dollars.

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com

I think www.etrade.com has really cheap commissions, let you start with small investments, and they let you get in on IPO's real easily (I'm not pushing it, I don't even have an account with them). I still have no clue when Handsprings' IPO is... I thought I read an estimated date on ZDNet or somewhere, but I forget when it is.

Unfortunately etrade needs 1000. Ameritrade is 500 until the end of the year. And I really wanted to buy some Palm stock.

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com

How about Suretrade? I looked into them once but their interface wasn't too great for me. I'll probably be able to get etrade based off going in with a friend, but If Suretrade has a 1000 startup, they don't mention it too much on their site.

THANK YOU Biz, Suretrade does not have a minimum. I'll be checking them out on Monday.

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com

Glad to hear it. That research project in school actually has paid off From what I gathered, they didn't score too badly at all. No worse anyway than Etrade/Ameritrade.

Plus they have the lowest fees I believe at 7.95 unless they've raised them.

If you want a bunch of mail and a free pen you can request info from Etrade.. I learned that

Perhaps after the holidays I'll drop 500 or so into suretrade to hold out for some IPOs. Time to add a "Stock Tip" forum

Funny thing is, people aren't supposed to ever post stock tips because of the risk of insider info. I seem to remember some people getting in trouble on Yahoo for doing that.

But you know me email address anyway

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com

Certainly don't want to get pinged for stock tip. I'll try out Suretrade (that's more of an agency tip than a stock tip). Still need a Handspring IPO date tip, which is more of a calendar tip than a stock tip. Here's a Forum-name tip: "Online Investing"? Which would eventually become a Springboard tip...

I wasn't talking the literal sense of stock tips.. like Ooh, buy this they're about to merge, etc...

More like "What the heck does this mean?" and "Did I goof?" things like that.. Those are the questions I'll soon be asking.

Remember that in order to break even you have to take into account the transaction cost for both buying and selling the stock...and the capital gains tax.

$100 is probably not leveraged enough to be worth it. Even at 7.95, you have to make 15.9%, not counting taxes to break even. Note that if you invest $1000, that's only 1.59% transaction cost to cover, etc.

You could argue that this is not a problem in the long run...eventually your $100 will get past the break-even point...this is true, but there's the lost opportunity cost of using the $100 for something else in the meantime.

I guess that the good news about such a small investment is that the potential capital gains are likely to be so small that you won't change tax brackets

Of course, if it's basically just for entertainment, that's fine too.

I can't speak for J, but myself, I would only want to do 100 bucks because I can tolerate losing 100.. 1000 would hurt me and my hockey ticket fund.

I consider it a small price to pay to learn.

Are there any sites out there that let you "play" sell/buy stocks? I bet I'd lose more than I made, so I wo uldn't be too upset if I actually won a few. Thanks
-b

BizEchilD,

Etrade has something called the Etrade game.

http://game.etrade.com/

Not only do you get to use $100,000 in play money, but if you do really really well you could win $1000. They run this every month - I've never had time to do it, but some of my students have.

Of course, the idea is that if you do well they suck you in to using their service instead of the others. I use Etrade because my Mom recommended it before the other online brokers got off the ground.