02-03-2014, 11:04 PM
I think it's best to buy every month, or whenever you can afford too. When the market is down your money buys more shares, and when it's up your money buys less shares.
This has a huge psychological benefit. The last thing anyone wants to do is spend a ton of money only to watch their stocks drop 3-5% within the next few days. If you buy small and often this lets you average down(or average up). If you have $5000 to deploy then you could actually spend it slowly. As an extreme example over 50 weeks, buy $100 a week. That's just an example but you get the idea.
There are several blue chips that you can buy with with zero commissions or very low commissions. This lets you buy very small amounts and often, but you are restricted since not all stocks can be bought like this.
Sharebuilder has a program where you get 12 trades for $12 a month. I don't use it but it might be appealing if your focus is solely on stocks since this way you can buy anything for only $1 a trade.
This has a huge psychological benefit. The last thing anyone wants to do is spend a ton of money only to watch their stocks drop 3-5% within the next few days. If you buy small and often this lets you average down(or average up). If you have $5000 to deploy then you could actually spend it slowly. As an extreme example over 50 weeks, buy $100 a week. That's just an example but you get the idea.
There are several blue chips that you can buy with with zero commissions or very low commissions. This lets you buy very small amounts and often, but you are restricted since not all stocks can be bought like this.
Sharebuilder has a program where you get 12 trades for $12 a month. I don't use it but it might be appealing if your focus is solely on stocks since this way you can buy anything for only $1 a trade.