IRA that allows individual stocks

Fidelity is the one I use, but many discount brokerage houses will allow that.

Vanguard.

Any of the major brokers will do that, Schwab, Fidelity, eTrade, etc. The concern I have - without knowing anything else about you, I know you are looking to invest in stocks for the first time. Otherwise, you wouldn't need names of brokers. Trading individual stocks is "too" easy. A point and click and you have

10 shares, 100, 1000. Presumably, the goal is to pick stocks that will beat some benchmark, some index. If one's goal is not to beat the (say) S&P 500, then why bother? We can tell you who will be happy to take their $5-$10 commissions, can you tell us what makes you think you have the time and skill to benefit from individual stock trading? Statistics show that 95% of people who trade individual stocks would have been better off simply using index funds. (I made that up, by the way) Joe

I would strongly support that. Your statistics sound about right, made up or not.

You're not alone in thinking Joe is a pretty good guesser. Here's an old article from Forbes Magazine.

What's really interesting about these stats is how human nature interprets them: 100% of stock pickers think they are in that 5% or so that beat the market.

We stopped asking people to rate themselves on their driving ability, because 90% rated themselves as "Superior". I think that fallacy is proven everyday on American roads.

Chip

Perhaps not accidentally, none of the retail brokerages provide investors with calculations of their returns.

I had to jump through major hoops to calculate my internal rate of return (and thanks to all members of this NG for their suggestions). I now have a Google Docs spreadsheet wit a starting value (in 2003), all inflows and outflows, and the final value (computed in real time based on my actual holdings). I use that to calculate IRR.

My performance, relative to S&P 500, with commissions factored in but not with taxes, is 6.06% above S&P 500 for 2003-now.

Note that I never consciously set out to outperform S&P and do not think in terms of "what stocks will outperform S&P next quarter". My biggest focus is on avoiding doing anything stupid or anything that appears to be herd behavior.

i

Fidelity does.

Mark Freeland snipped-for-privacy@nyc.rr.com

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I use Wells Fargo Wellstrade. If you have a fair amount in total funds, it's a good deal. You open a PMA checking account and link that with your brokerage accounts. Then you get 100 free transactions per account, per year. That includes equity trades (including ETFs) and mutual fund purchases, but not individual bonds. You avoid most fees on the accounts as well. The PMA account has a monthly fee if your aggregate funds amount is below $25k. That includes 10% of mortgage balance if you happen to have them as your lender.

Brian

Thanks for all the replies. Procrastinating... :)

-Antony