last year i bought 10 shares of an internet stock i expected to thrive. It didn’t. It actually went to zero. So, does that mean my shares became worthless? If I had requested physical shares would they now hold value since the stock is increasing? Increasing is a minuscule .36 per share now. I bought in at $2.50 a share. It was my very first stock purchase and I am now considering buying stocks again. I know I only lost $25 but I do not want to make the same mistake twice. Thanks.
Debbie
If you still own the stock, it should be worth 3.60 right now.
Unless the company was dissolved (or de-listed), you should still own 10 shares, worth whatever the current value is.
Why do you think your stock is worthless?
Physical or not, the shares you own are the shares you own. The value they are worth on any particular day is the value you could presumably sell them for on that day. I say presumably because your broker would need to find a buyer willing to purchase the stocks at that price.
It’s really not rocket science.
i thought it was worthless because i used ing direct and they dont show on my page anymore. thanks for the replies. ing just changed to citibank so i will call tomorrow and get it straightened out. i am seriously new at this and even though i am 44 yo i believe it is never to late to start investing. again, thank you for replying!
Just a warning: stocks selling at less than $5 a share are called “penny stocks.” Unless they’re on a major stock exchange, they are considered very high risk; stockbrokers are required by law to discourage people from trading in them and cannot recommend them to their clients unless their clients have traded in the regularly.
The prices are very easy to manipulate, and it’s hard to find a buyer quickly; most penny stocks you see are hyped as part of “pump and dump” schemes, where someone buys a lot of shares, hypes the stock to the skies, and then sells off their shares to the suckers who believe them.
If you are beginning investor, your best move is to stick with well-established stocks. You will have to invest more, but a company like GE or Home Depot or Verizon is going to be in business a year from now and you can easily sell your shares at any time.
As Hugh Johnson is fond of quoting, “it’s time, not timing that makes money in the stock market.” You’re usually better off buying a strong stock and sticking with it than trying to figure out the best time to sell.
Damn straight. The one piece of advice I give clients each and every day is to buy solid investments and stick with them. The whole concept of dancing around the market day trading is a mugs game.
Moved to IMHO with edited thread title to indicate subject.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I agree it’s never too late to start investing - stick with it, some good advice has already been given in this thread. I’ll just add - watch out for charges. I don’t know what charges ING have/had, but there would almost certainly have been a dealing charge or commission to buy your shares, and that’s often a fixed fee. Even if that fee were $5 (which is very cheap), that means 20% of your $25 investment has disappeared in charges. Usually, the same charge applies to sell the investment. In this example, then, the shares would need to grow by 50% just to re-coup the charges. Whereas if you invest $100 and the charge is $5, this is a much better deal. Essentially, if there is a fixed fee then you need to invest a reasonably large amount in order to avoid the charges taking up a huge percentage of your investment. And there may be annual fees, and taxes, as well.
There is generally some sort of fee for acquire mutual funds, but rarely is there one to sell them. At least the one I work for. That does not apply to individual stocks, for those there can be a fee for buy and sell, though it tends to be lower overall that mutual funds.
One place where mutual funds can pay off over the long term is in rights of accumulation. That is, the more money you put into a specific fund family, the cheaper each buy becomes until there’s almost no sales charge once you get up to a certain level (this can vary per fund family).
Another advantage of mutual funds is the ability to exchange them at no fee. So if you have a conservation fund - one that has a significant percentage of its holdings in bonds, say - and the bond rate goes nuts and your fund starts losing ground quickly you can switch from your conservative fund to one that’s more growth-oriented - and therefore protected from swings in the bond rate - at no charge.