The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Investor Alley => Topic started by: ambimammular on July 23, 2015, 09:11:25 PM
-
Has anyone used Computershare to buy individual stocks? Do you have to be an employee of the company you want to buy into?
I've never purchased anything outside of our retirement accounts. I'd prefer to do it myself instead of fork over a chunk to a "manager"/salesman when I know what I'm looking for (and even when I don't).
I thought Computershare was a avenue for doing this, but they seem to require me to have a "holder account number" to sign up to be a new member. Or they'd let me buy more of a stock that I already own, but not make an initial purchase. What am I not understanding?
-
No, you do not have to be an employee of the company you wish to purchase.
Follow the links to make a purchase in whatever stock you are looking to buy. You will receive a trade confirmation in the mail, which contains the holder account number you need to sign up online and manage your holdings.
-
Just because I'm curious, why buy shares through computershare as opposed to etrade, scottrade or other deep discount broker?
Lower commissions? Better trade execution?
-
Had some stock held by Computershare and other brokers due to employer changing company stock purchase brokers every few years.
Consolidated all shares into Fidelity last year to take advantage of a Fidelity incentive (and get all the shares in one place).
Computershare did the transfer fastest.
Computershare charged the most to do the transfer.
Moral of the story: compare fees among the various brokers before you choose one. Also see http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/computershare-fees-suck-how-do-i-move-paper-share-certificates-into-my-ira/ for at-least-somewhat relevant discussion.
-
Thanks for all the info so quickly. Not using etrade or scottrade is simply out of lack of exposure. I'm delighted to take mustachian advice.
We've got this new chunk of money that I hate seeing just sit in our bank account. I'll slow down though and do more research.
-
I thought Computershare was a avenue for doing this, but they seem to require me to have a "holder account number" to sign up to be a new member. Or they'd let me buy more of a stock that I already own, but not make an initial purchase. What am I not understanding?
It depends entirely on the stock. They are generally a DRIP platform where the company (e.g., Exxon) is paying some or all of the transaction fees. For some, the company will only work through computershare with current shareholders and so won't allow initial purchases. For some, there are reasonable fees, for others the fees are not such a good deal. You have to look into the terms for each.
So it can be a good deal you should definitely look into if you're interested in DCAing into a particular stock that they service. But it's not the same as a brokerage platform where you can buy any stock at market price.
-
Just because I'm curious, why buy shares through computershare as opposed to etrade, scottrade or other deep discount broker?
Lower commissions? Better trade execution?
Some companies (less and less by the day) have no commissions so it is a nice way to accumulate without paying commissions. Also allows for partial shares so you can say set it to $50 a month and it just buys whatever it buys. Used to be alot more companies with no fees but more and more switching to fees now. For any of mine, I haven't been charged a transfer fee so usually accumulate there and then if want to sell/fees imposed will transfer for free to Fidelity.
Off top of my head, some no fee companies on there: XOM, PG, JNJ, ABT, ABBV, COP, BDX, OHI (minimal fee like .01 a share), UNP. Also MMM and GIS at Wells Fargo.
-
This is a one time investment 10-15K, so not a huge sum. And it's unlikely that we'll be adding more to it in the next 6 years. In fact, this is the first time we've had enough left over to max the Roths and 403b. I'm really just looking for a way to dip a toe in the taxable investments water.
The real goal is to have cash enough to support a half-year, no-pay sabbatical 7 years from now. If we sock away enough additional money between now and then, than I'd rather just hold onto the investment for good.
DH and I have been going round and round on whether this REIT we're looking at is the better choice over just throwing it at our 3.5 interest rate student loan, (out of easy and laziness and satisfaction of just seeing it go away). 14,100 loan
Mathematically I know better, but perhaps this one time purchase will be eaten away by annual fees?
I just wish the one I want was being sold by Vanguard, so I could have everything together in a place I like.
-
This is a one time investment 10-15K, so not a huge sum. And it's unlikely that we'll be adding more to it in the next 6 years. In fact, this is the first time we've had enough left over to max the Roths and 403b. I'm really just looking for a way to dip a toe in the taxable investments water.
The real goal is to have cash enough to support a half-year, no-pay sabbatical 7 years from now. If we sock away enough additional money between now and then, than I'd rather just hold onto the investment for good.
DH and I have been going round and round on whether this REIT we're looking at is the better choice over just throwing it at our 3.5 interest rate student loan, (out of easy and laziness and satisfaction of just seeing it go away). 14,100 loan
Mathematically I know better, but perhaps this one time purchase will be eaten away by annual fees?
I just wish the one I want was being sold by Vanguard, so I could have everything together in a place I like.
I would not buy ONE REIT for that amount. Why not just buy a REIT ETF/fund? VNQ.
-
Aside from any other investing advice about whether this is a good idea, I wouldn't use computershare for that size of a one-time purchase. Their low charges are for batch buys, where your purchase gets batched with a bunch of others and you pay, like, the average end of day cost of the security on whatever they day the buy it or something like that. Point is, you take whatever price they get it at. But for that amount of money, the specific price you get it at makes more of a difference and you'd be better with a regular brokerage platform that allows you to set a limit price. And their market purchase fees are three times what you'd pay at one of the discount online brokers. Some people might argue that for long-term buy and hold the exact price you buy at doesn't matter. And you might still like computershare because I've read that they don't charge fees to transfer out like most brokers do. But I'd doublecheck that you can't buy it through Vanguard. Vanguard has a brokerage platform that lets you buy a lot of stocks and funds for $7/trade.