Dtjytyk

I'd like to buy a little amount (say, 5000 €) of stocks. I know it's risky, especially for an absolute beginner like me. Maybe you would like to persuade me to start with stuff such as such as mutual funds or ETF (btw, thanks for dissuading me from buying Bitcoins 😀).

However, I made up my mind, and I'm going to do it. I decided which stocks to buy, and I decided how long to keep them (10 years, hoping that the companies whose stock I'm buying don't go bankrupt before). The companies are all headquartered in USA.

I have no idea how to do it in practice, though. I have a bank account in a online bank, and it looks like the bank provides tools to buy stocks (I can provide the bank's name, if needed). However, in my country (Europe, but again I can provide the precise country, if strictly needed) you would never just subscribe a mortgage with your bank, because it's quite likely that by shopping online for mortages, you would find better options. The same is true for car insurance, for example.

So, I was wondering if I should look around for "online portfolio systems" (is this the right name?). However, I recently got a lot of spammy phone calls about forex (even though I never put my phone number online recently, and I also have 0 interest at all for forex). So I'd rather not expose myself online too much, searching for ways to buy stocks.

So my question is: how do I buy stocks? Since I'm going to keep them for a long time, I guess I'll need a service which has mostly low keeping fees, while buying/selling fees may be less important, since I'm not planning to buy/sell in the short term. Any suggestions on how to find it? Also, can I buy any numbers of a given stock, or are there some minimal amounts, and how do I find them? Finally, my employer gave me quite a lot of company stocks as a bonus. Is it possible to exchange part of them with the stocks I want to buy? Or the only thing I can do is to sell them (say, sell 5000 € of my company's stock) and buy an equivalent amount of the stocks I'm looking for?

PS not sure if the tag trading applies to my case: if it doesn't, please suggest a better tag.

If you're just planning to buy-and-hold, it is worth considering whether the value of the time you spend on searching for a cheap brokerage will not dwarf the savings.

Around here (Denmark) banks don't generally seem to charge fees merely for holding stock for you. They charge a commission for each trade, some fractional percentage of the value which could easily eat into one's profit if one is doing frequent speculative trades. But for buy-and-hold that's a one-off expense. If it costs you 5 or 10 euros to invest your 5000 through your local bank, how much shopping-around effort is it worth to you to cut that down to 1 or 2?

Keeping it with the bank where you're already a customer will also save you the hassle of managing a set of separate credentials for a different online broker that you will use perhaps once a year (and keeping your details with them up to date if you move, etc). And, psychologically, the bank's commission percentage may help you resist the impulse to start trading speculatively.

Banks that offer brokerage services tend to charge high commissions and some charge additional account maintenance fees. Therefore, it's possible that your bank may not be the best choice.

Best broker depends on what your needs are. If all you want is the ability to buy and sell stocks occasionally, I'd suggest that you look for a reputable broker in a regulated country that has low commissions and no maintenance fees. If you need more services (research, charting, real time streaming news, etc.), you're likely to pay higher commissions. There are a number of brokers that offer trading in multiple countries. Do a Google search on "Best European Brokers" and compare them.

Whether you can sell your company stock depends on whether it has any restrictions. Speak to your employer about that.

(All slightly guessing: this is how things are in one or two European countries I know, and chances are your European country works similarly - but things do differ between countries - so please double check how it is actually for you)

I'd suggest to start with a broker that operates in your country. Once you know how things work locally, you can explore further.

In my European Country, a domestic broker will withhold the appropriate taxes for me and supply me with a tax sheet that even tells me in which lines of the income tax declaration I fill which numbers.

With a foreign account, you probably still need to do pay taxes in the country of your tax residence. But chances are

1. there won't be any streamlined way in the tax declaration (and at least my country tends to change the forms frequently - last time I was phoning back and forth with the tax office because I couldn't find where to put such foreign income and also the tax officer at the service hotline didn't know where those lines had moved since the year before.
   
   This also means that you'll have to personally make sure you pay those taxes.


2. I haven't had a brokerage account in any other EU country so this is a guesstimate but I'd ask what kind of paperwork a forein EU citizen has to provide and whether they'll do tax prepayments in the country where the account is (which means that you have more hassle to get that money back). Don't forget to ask whether they charge fees on that paperwork!

Note that

• a domestic brokerage account can hold foreign shares


• foreign shares may be traded at a domestic exchange (though maybe volume will be low)


• a domestic broker can give you access to foreign exchanges (check the fees)


• for foreign shares (regardless where they are held), you may have additional paperwork with the taxes (incl. for claiming back taxes - again: ask the broker whether they charge fees on the paperwork you need them to provide for you)

I can only answer from a US perspective, and you need to check if it is different in your country. You can find a traditional brokerage firm and develop a relationship with a broker in the firm, or you can go to an on-line brokerage firm. Two examples of the latter are e-Trade or Ameritrade, but there are others.

You should do a bit of research before committing to any individual firm.

One caveat: since your objective is to buy and hold, don't sign up for a "managed account". Such accounts will charge you a fee whether you trade or not, and will also charge you a fee (but a smaller fee) for the amount (if any) that you have with them in cash. A managed account will save you money in fees if you are a very active trader. An account in which you pay commissions only on trades (buy or sell) is appropriate for your current objectives, which, of course may change at some time.

My broker has both types of accounts, and I have had both kinds of accounts, but for my purposes now I prefer to pay fees only when I buy or sell.

Stock buying is like anything...

You can only learn by doing.

I would start by learning about stock. I would start by reading about Warren Buffett.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/092214/best-books-warren-buffett.asp

And read his annual reports and his shareholder owner's manual.

Then I would open an account and start investing.

WB says:
Invest in businesses you understand

Invest in honest people (honest managers/ceos)

Invest in competent people (competent managers/ceos)

There is really no point to practicing.. (you can make a phony account where you pretend to buy stock with pretend money). .

but that's probably counterproductive.

use real money.. no training wheels.