Hi!

I recently graduated from college and have always wanted to get inolved in the stock market, but never really had the money to while I was in school. Right now, Im currently putting $450 into my Roth IRA, $260 in my 401K, $269 into my whole life insurance each month  but I still have about 300 left that i feel i want to play in the stock market with each month, cause i feel its a better investment than going to sit at the poker tables.

My question is, since i have my long term investments taken care of, what should i do with the addition 300 each month? I could put it into my 401K, but I want to take some risks and possibly make some money. would you guys recommend penny stocks? or other stocks that have a chance of blowing up?

I notice most penny stocks don't have much data, is that because they are fairly new, or they just dont record it?

Also, I really dont know much about investing on my own yet, so any pointers or advice would be much appreciated!!!

 

 

Thanks!!

-JM

Put the $300 n your Zecco money market sweep account and earn 4.38% (currently) interest on the cash balance while you play the market with your margin dollars.

what are margin dollars? sorry i really dont know that much..

Interest on the money market sweeps is down in the 2% range now. The information on the application, unless its been updated, was correct as of August of 2007. Rates have gone down.

My favorite penny stock is GOVX.  Check out the member boards for Geovax Labs @ Ragingbull.com.!

Don't trade on margin and don't focus exclusively on penny stocks. It's great that you a few hundred dollars each month to invest. Start researching companies you might want to invest in. Check out people's portfolios on Zecco Share to get ideas for companies and then look more into them. If you have questions about someone's portfolio choices you can send them a private message through Zecco.

I would agree with emobrien, as newbie do not trade on margin, do not look into penny stock and do not trade options.  Learn as you go. 
Good luck.

Is there a reason you bought whole life insurance? You're paying a LOT for someone so young. Is there a reason you didn't go with term life?

BTW kudos to you for beingt a diligent saver so early. I wish I'd had your wisdom straight out of college.

Well, I went back and forth on the idea of the whole life insurance a lot at first. But after looking into it, it gains about 8%/year over the last 10 years, and it is also non taxed just like a Roth IRA. I guess I looked at it like it would be about 11-12% had it been taxed, so that to me seemed to make a little bit of sense to me.

I guess it came down to that if i didnt put it there, I would struggle my force myself to invest it elsewhere.

I've heard the term technicals when trading penny stocks, what does that mean?

And i think I've decided to put money into energy and oil stocks... not sure how well that will work, but i dont see them going down anytime soon

Hi JM,

Although you asked about penny stocks, the other information in your post is very interesting...

1. Do you have any taxable savings that you can get to without penalties? If not, I would save the $300 until you get a few months worth of living expenses saved up.

2. Good grief you are paying a TON for life insurance!  Do you have a family that you support? Not knowing the whole story, that is an incredibly high monthly premium. You may want to reconsider that decision.  If you need life insurance, check into term.  Somebody is getting a fat commission from you every month.

3. If you want to play with penny stocks, I suggest setting aside a single dollar amount (say $1,000) and only use that money until you have some experience. You will probably learn a lot without blowing through a huge wad of cash.  I'm doing a similar thing myself.

Congrats on all the saving you are doing. You're on the right track.

 

Hi, I'm new to Zecco too and have just registered for an account.

I just wanted to ask if Zecco requires members to have minimum $2500, for just a regular, basic investment account, on their balances, otherwise, there's a certain percentage...idk how much exactly...of commission fee charge taken from account per trade.

If you want ten free trades per month you need a minimum of $2500 equity (cash + stocks) in your account. If you don't meet that, you pay $4.50 per trade.

Definitely think twice before opening an account here in Zecco.. but you you decide.

PS. I'm not soliciting specific trading questions or account help, but just sharing my experience with Zecco so far.

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1. The new upgraded ACH page deleted all my confirmed bank relationship links. It's been more than a month that a representative promised that this will be resolved. To date, nothing has been done.

2. When you click on Download to Money, the page goes to a Penson log in screen. It doesn't allow you to download any transactions that were executed.

3. On the Trading page, under Balance tab, the day's real-time balance, after executing a position, doesn't update correctly.

4. ACH transfer into zecco account requires a 5-10 day hold. If you want to release such funds, you have to email customer service a printscreen of your other online bank balance (defeating privacy purposes because other information is revealed). Whereas Suretrade's "MoneyDirect" allows you to trade on an ACH fund transfer in a day!

5. Generally the zecco pages are laden with pop ads and banner ads, slowing the navigation between pages, even when I have broadband connection speed!

6. Emails to customer service are not responded on a timely manner. One of their email took a week to respond. I never got a response at all from one of the rep.

7. Calls to customer service not up to par. On one occassion, while explaining my issues, a rep put me on hold without first asking me if I want to hold. The rep just abruptly said "hold on" while I'm still talking. Put me on hold for five minutes, then I hear a dial tone.

Zecco is still not up to par as compared with their competitors. The pricing model is ideal but  is not the only measure of excellent performance and competitive edge. A lot still have to be resolved. Unless you want to wait, I would recommend to move your cash to their competitor. But leave your account open. Then come back when all the above issues and others have been resolved.

FEDUP!

 

ps.. I tried to spellcheck this post and gives me a message "Netspell Libraries not properly linked"! :) Goes to show you....

Goodness, sounds to me like what needs to be thought twice about is how things are done.  I have yet to find it necessary to complain to Zecco about anything.  Maybe I'm just lucky.  But if so, I wish some of that luck would rub off on my stock picking!