Buying (1) share of APPL a waste?

You could but if you're doing this to get a feel of the market, it's almost wasteful to do so because on top of the share price itself, there are brokerage/transaction fees to pay so you'll likely to pay $135-145 for that one share. If you want to "play" the market, you don't need to actually buy a share. Set up an excel spreadsheet with the stocks you plan on looking at and follow it and track the movements.

Not really worth it if you're looking to make money. As the previous poster said, with broker fees and such you have a lot of overhead for a single share. Not to say you can't make money off of it, but it's not particularly efficient.

Generally it's best to invest at least 2-3 thousand if you can.

If you're doing it for fun, why not? You'll help boost everyone else's stock

Reminds me I should have invested in AAPL when Gil Amelio was CEO

close2reality said:

New to investing, I was going to throw spend the 125.00 and grab one share right now....just to see and get a feel for the market.

My goal would be to sit on the APPL stock and not make any transactions...

Any thoughts? Would I pay a lot of fee's if I just bought the share and sat on it? I'm a little confused on how fees work and if it's only an issue if your constantly trading etc.

Thanks.

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APPL stock is one of the worst stocks to invest in unless you have enough money to buy plenty of shares. Even buying a 100 shares wouldn't be worth it. Buying one share of any stock(even a cheap stock) is not putting your foot in the door or getting a feel for the market.

Fees will depend on your brokerage firm and you will be responsible for the taxes of buying shares and the taxes of profit. You can sit on it without paying fees. Note that most firms have a minimum set amount of buying, meaning you can't buy just one share.

close2reality said:

As a veteran I go through USAA, my first 50 trades/3 months...which ever comes first, are free.

I purchased one share of AAPL @ 124.57 mid-morning yesterday, by days end it had dropped to 124.24, although AAPL was up yesterday, I bought the share at the height of the day for AAPL.

With that said, theoretically I have no overhead with this stock, until I decide to sell it. So I'm already broken even, minus yesterdays 32 cent loss for me.

Judging by AAPL's performance, it seems crazy, even if it's small owning only one share, that I wouldn't "profit" from sitting on the share for a while.

Just to get a feel, and at the same time earn a few dollars. Then when I feel comfortable, I can either sell my stock for something else, or sell it and put the "small profit" in my savings...even if in 3 months iv only made 5 dollars on it.

But I do understand for most, one share is a waste to make any marginal profit....not worth the time sort to speak.

If I have this all backwards, please let me know, but hypothetically speaking isn't that a very reasonable conclusion?

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You got to know when to buy. Apple stock is pretty much around it's normal peak now. Maybe you should have waited for the Apple watch release. If it doesn't sell well or gets bad press, then the stock could temporarily drop down $10-$20 less a share.

I usually look at the 52 week range. Apple's is 73.05 - 133.60. Then do some research around the time it hit the lowest and see if it's something that's most likely to repeat itself. And that's probably easier to do with Apple.

Morpheo said:

Reminds me I should have invested in AAPL when Gil Amelio was CEO

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Ugh... I sold 50 shares (equal to 1400 shares today with all splitting over the years) back in 1998. It was that year's Christmas bonus.

close2reality said:

it's looked pretty gloomy for AAPL this week, hopefully things turn around.

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Keeping an eye on a single share and watching the price every day, seems like a lot of work and stress over very little.

AAPL hit an all time high of $133/share not too long ago. It's been hovering back down around $123-$126 for a while. It'll get back up to $133 again eventually - it's just hard to say when. It will likely move past $133 at some point too. But you might have to hold on for a long while to see that happen.

The stock goes up, huge investors "take profit" and sell off a bunch of shares, driving the price down. Price goes down, investors reload on shares at a discount...rinse and repeat.

To be investing this little, you have to be in it for the long haul.

If I took the one of the $22 share my parents invested in ~2002, today it would be worth quite a bit considering the splits and dividends. Apple has split 2:1 (twice?) and then 7:1 more recently. In that case, the stock would have had a substantial gain. Not really a profit in the grand scheme of life, but enough to be a nice few hundred bucks in the pocket. (Although my parents made off fantastically off Apple stock, they sold of about 75% of their initial 2002 buy in by the time well before the stock stock hit $700+ a couple years ago )

To sell it a few dollars higher makes little sense. So the difference at buying at $124.50 vs 125.00 or even $135 has little consequence. I highly, highly doubt you'll see the amount of growth that has occurred in the past 15 years in the next 15 years, but who knows. It sounds like you're just doing this for the novelty of it.

Think about the two major obvious investing strategies- long term and short term. Both can work pay out well. With short term you'll end up paying more in brokerage fees and such obviously. I bought Palm (yes, like Palm Pilot, the PDA's) 2 weeks before HP bought them (5 years ago?) and in that time doubled my investment. I invested in BlackBerry at $4.50 (close to 2 years ago?) hoping to do the same thing. There stock went up to $11+ within a few months and has been hovering between 9 and 11 dollars since. I don't know what I'm thinking, but we'll see where it goes. I bought Ford for under $2 during the auto industry crash in 2008/2009. They're at $16 now, but I intend to hold on to it for much longer as their stock will only likely increase in my estimate.

I've had some great and unexpected success. I've had some dismal failures. Overall the good has outweighed the bad which is what's important in the end. I'm not an expert by any means. I was lucky to have inherited money and a grandfather and father who worked on Wall Street. Most of my stocks are in mutual funds and managed by a stock broker as I like to play on the safer side. The investments I determine and play around with myself are just a small percentage.

Mousse said:

Ugh... I sold 50 shares (equal to 1400 shares today with all splitting over the years) back in 1998. It was that year's Christmas bonus.

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Yeah, we all have at least one of those sad stories. My crystal ball is no better. At the time, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. Hard to believe.

close2reality said:

I'm not stressing. if it makes any sense.....i'm kind of trying to wrap my head around the market, so I'm involving myself and paying attention.

I suppose I could wait until my share bounces back even, sell it, and focus on my mutual fund..probably better off.

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You just need to ignore it. I've put $5,000 into a Roth IRA and it has gained about 12% since inception, but some weeks it drops a few %, some weeks it regains it, other weeks it stays the same. Sometimes that's a few hundred bucks either way. Investing is a long term game. A difference over a day/week/month or three is irrelevant in a 20-40+ year process (depending on your age and investment plan).

Several thoughts on this.

#1. Sometimes it's nice to own one solid share of a company to feel like you have a stake.... even if it's minor. Side note: investing in a company you solely have an interest in from a customer/fan standpoint probably isn't the best idea unless it's for the fun of being one of the stockholders of said company.

#2. ~$125 investment isn't going to lose or gain anything meaningful.

#3. It takes a lot of attention to figure out why things move up or down the way they do. Earnings, overall market sentiment, news, etc all have an effect. Predicting those things and their effect is tough. One stock I own beat earnings by a large margin and fell drastically as a result. Hard to make sense of that unless you really dig into the filings and understand the numbers.

#4. I've read before that some huge majority of "day traders" end up losing everything. To even come close to being successful at that, you probably need to make it your full time job to stay on top of things. Still a larger risk.

#5. I personally have lost complete interest in investing in individual stocks or trying to time/watch the market. Too much volatility and risk. I only own 400 shares of an individual stock now. Everything else is in mutual funds or an index fund. My main investments are with Edward Jones and I have regular meetings with my rep who has suggestions on balancing and what-not. I figure there is a value in having a rep and a company that does this stuff for a living rather than just trying to pick things myself. Still helps to be educated to understand what is going on, but I'd rather have a professional doing to work.

I almost forgot:

#6. If you're really just starting out with investing, I think the best advice anyone could give is to not focus so much on the individual investment (which stock/fund/index/etc) or chasing a big payday from a stock pick, but to focus on regular investing. A one time investment isn't the key. If you're starting with $125, that's great. How much are you putting in next time you get paid? I started my "investing" with a $10 every two week contribution to my deferred comp in order to get my $5 match. I no longer get any match but I've now expanded my investments to include deferred comp (work), roth (Ed Jones), 529 (Ed Jones), managed (Ed Jones), and self directed (ING/Cap1). The numbers, without context, are relatively meaningless, but I think I'm up to about 20% of my gross pay check going into some manner of investment.

close2reality said:

It would suck to dump 4K into a S&P500 index fund and watch it tank for the next 3 months. I would rather give the market some time and begin my investing portfolio ahead of the game...which is at the beginning of a new bull run.

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Dollar-cost-averaging.

I liquidated about $10k from the individual stock I owned and am having my investment account automatically invest $200 or $250 every couple weeks in SPY. My thought is that it'll invest about $5k over the next two years spreading out the buys and mitigating the risk of a large drop wiping out the investment. If the market does drop, I'd double or triple up on the automatic investment.

edit: It's tough to time the market. You may sit on the sidelines too long or miss the bottom or jump in too late.

close2reality said:

since my last post I liquidated the AAPL share...

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I "liquidated" my change jar last week and had about $120.

now im no warren buffet, but may i suggest investing in bitcoin. just buy 1 and then see were the value is in say 1yr from now. my guess it would be worth much more than any stock you can buy today.

sdilley14 said:

Keeping an eye on a single share and watching the price every day, seems like a lot of work and stress over very little.

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I disagree. It's a great way to learn, with very little risk.

OP - Consider it $125 for training and you'll probably get the money back!

Just watch it every day, read the financial press assiduously and it'll all start to make sense.

wct097 said:

It's tough to time the market.

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That's the whole purpose behind dollar cost averaging. You're not [all] in at the high or the low, but you still need to pick a smart portfolio. But if you're picking a single stock, well, okay, best of luck there.

close2reality said:

Thanks for the encouragement.

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You're welcome. It's how I got started. Was completely clueless at first but it all slowly made sense.

And as some Chinese philosopher once said: "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand"

Just limit your risk when you get around to the "do-ing" bit, okay.