Can a person show up at one of the stock markets, say in New York, and wander around and find people to buy and sell stock from in order to bypass a brokerage’s commission? I realize that this would be basically pointless since the cost to travel to the market and back would wipe out any savings.
Front desk clerk: “Welcome to the NYSE, how can I help you.”
Guy off the street: "I have $10000. “I’d like to wander around and look at stock.”
No, you have to be a member, and to be a member, buy a seat.
And those seats appear to be quite pricey – as much as $2.6 million, to be precise. Although I believe it’s legal to lease one for a day…
No. But MANY companies offer their stock for sale DIRECTLY to the public through their investor relations dept. Coke (KO) for instance has a direct investment program. Lots of Fortune 500 co’s offer this service. Not sure where to get a comprehensive list of them all but a call to investor relations of the ones you are interested in is the best start. NO COMMISSIONS!!!
You can’t even get near the NYSE nowadays. Armed guards and barricades all around. Just get yourself an account with Scottrade and make all the trades you want for $7 each. All from the comfort of your home.
If you want to sell a house without a broker, find a buyer yourself. If you want to buy a house without a broker, go find a “for sale by owner”. You can do the same with stock. Go find your own buyer or seller and skip the middle man. It’s that easy to explain. You don’t even need to go to a stock exchange. Stock brokers and exchanges merely facilitate access to other buyers and sellers.
The question is whether this would really be cheaper than going through a stock broker. What are you thinking of - putting a classified ad in a newspaper saying “100 shares of XYC Corp. for sale at $24.50 each, please call 555-1234”? I guess that would cost you more than the fees of a run-of-themill execution-only broker (which is precisely why stock markets evolved in the first place - they reduce the transaction costs of finding a partner to make a deal with). In addition to that, striking the deal would be only part of the story - you’ll also need to transfer the shares to the buyer. With paper shares this might be possible (even though the costs and risks incurred by the physical transport also have to be taken into account, not to mention the hassle of collecting dividends on paper shares), but if the shares are held in some account, or worse if they’re registered shares, then organising the transfer as a private individual will be a pain. Go through a stock broker, it’s cheaper, easier and more secure for you than anything else, and you’re also likely to get better prices for your shares: The spread between bid and ask prices is smaller the higher the trade volume on the market is, and the volume on your classified ad segment is not likely to be very high.
To add to my previous post:
If you wanted to trade shares yourself without using a broker, you’d also have to meet a shitload of regulatory requirements. It’s not per se illegal, but you have to make sure you stay within the law, and that would be a hassle. For instance, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 uses a very broad definition of the term “exchange”:
A newspaper that started to regularly publish ads of the sort described in my previous post would thus run the risk of being found to be an “exchange” within that meaning, and it would thus require registration as a security exchange and be subject to all sorts of regulation. Your newspaper would therefore be reluctant to publish that ad. Similary, other facilities that could help you find purchasers for your shares would do the same; and finding a buyer for your shares by just walking around in your neighborhood or asking friends and friends’s friends will be tedious and not very promising.