? on buying stocks

Looking to buy some individual stocks. Have not done this before. I can go through one of the trading companies - ETRADE - merrilledge - or? Any suggestions you can give me. Thanks

I use Fidelity. No complaints. Costs 7 bucks or so per trade, and that is it.

I've been on e*trade for over a decade. I don't see a need to move, but there are other good options. If you haven't already, you should build a "play money" virtual portfolio, and see how well your picks do before investing real money. I would suggest buying quality (i.e. blue chips), as probably 90% of the speculative picks I've made have either tanked or took forever to take off.

Have fun!

I used etrade with no problems.

Make sure that whomever you use will not loan out your shares to shorts, and thus work against you for a small cut of their profit.

Since you haven't bought any yet I would hold off a bit. The market is getting a bit oversold and from what I've read you can expect a pull back sometime soon. Of course no one can predict the future but because of the run up in stock prices that have occurred over the last few months I am thinking of selling off a few of my winners to lock in profits and some of my not so wining stocks. I may also transfer some of my mutual fund shares into Money Market funds.

I have been changing my stock buying ways. I started off with buying aggressive stocks, but now I realize that the path to happiness is littered with dividends.

My goal.. 2 grand a month and I am out of here. I will get a bigger boat, sell off everything that doesn't fit aboard, and when the weather gets cold, I go south, when it gets warm, I will head north.

The stock market is in its biggest bubble yet. The economy that supposedly underlies it is in terrible shape. Now is not the time to buy stocks IMHO.

Thanks for the tips/help.

As a side note, my 401k is at an all time high. Should I think about shifting it to something more stable? I am 5-6 years away from a voluntary retirement and they automatically put my funds into something geared toward a retirement in 2-3 years.

I realize this isn't much info. I'm just worried about the stock bubble.

In reply to spitfirebill:

They say it's bad to try to time the market, but if I was that close to retirement and invested primarily in stocks, I would consider taking some gains and moving at least a portion of my holdings into low-risk options.