I purchased 20 stocks at $166.34 each through my bank. For fun I watched it for a few minutes seeing the variations and the change it had on my account, switching between positive and negative values. I left it for a few days, and now I went to look at it again today and the stock has risen up to $169, yet in my account summary it shows that I am down $25.60. As it is the weekend I have no contacts with them, does anyone know what could cause this?
Probably a fee you paid to make the trade(s). You say you purchased 20 stocks. Do you mean you bought stock in 20 different companies? If so each trade likely has its own fee vs one fee for one transaction.
Did you see the trade confirmation?
That will have the exact price you paid per share, plus the commission.
The price you are seeing in your account now is an estimate. I am not sure how they do it - it may be based off the last trade, the last bid price, or the last after hours trade.
It is possible, for example, what you saw is the last after hours trade (if they have one), while they are basing the price off the last intraday trade.
Not sure, but you will need to take into account the commission both ways - and there is no way to come up with an “exact” value. Best to take into account bid price and commission to be conservative (IMHO).
To be clear, I paid a single fee up front for 20 stocks of one company. Right after the transaction the +/- value was set at 0 and any net positive or negative variation showed as such. Now, with a fairly substantial positive change above average purchase price, I am showing negative. As far as I know the value has not changed since Friday night. The site shows the stock as valued at 169 (I assume last purchase) and my purchase at 166.34. The difference of value does not (from what I can see) relate to the commission I paid to make the trade.
I’m hoping he meant 20 shares - seems more likely as otherwise most brokers fees would be eating away more than what he suggested 
Like DataX said, you can’t be sure what value they are using to calculate the value of your position at a time when the market is closed. It might be off the last trade, the last after hours trade, or even the latest bid. Is the value that they show for the position $3380? If it isn’t, then they aren’t using the $169 price. (20 x 169) If they do show a position value of $3380, then the commission you paid may have been pretty sizeable. Otherwise, you perhaps did not purchase it at the price you think you did. Did you specify a price, or did you use a market order?
You can probably see your transaction history online, and that should give you some details on the price paid, commission, or hidden fees.
By the way, you mentioned you bought it through your bank. Obviously, you will do what you feel most comfortable doing, but once you become more familiar with how investment accounts work, you might want to look into an online broker. You may find the fees are lower than what you are paying at your bank. (Also, if you placed the order over the phone talking to a live human, you almost certainly will pay a very much higher commission than if you place the order yourself online.)
Tesla, huh? Good luck, I hope it works out for you.
Without telling us more, like what stock, what bank, your online ID and password (ok, that’s a joke), all we can do is speculate.
Perhaps what you were seeing on the web site the day you purchased the stock was the change in the “interday” value. Perhaps. now that the exchange is closed, you are only seeing the value at the close of the previous day (Thursday). Why they wouldn’t use the Friday closing price I don’t know, but maybe it has to do with Monday being a holiday and they just haven’t updated. Maybe the price is being based on “after hours” trades. After hours trades can be significantly different than the closing price since some of them are low volume trades and are often used just to correct errors or other accounting issues. My cynical mind also believes that some of them are attempts of Money Managers to influence the price of the stock by doing this, but I am probably full of it since there are probably laws that are intended to prevent that.
Regardless, check the situation again on Tuesday and see if it hasn’t sorted itself out. And, remember, the value of the stock is only what people are willing to pay for it. The price reported on the exchanges are only the prices people have been willing to pay, not what they will be willing to pay for yours. As they say, past performance is no indication of future yield.
Thanks for the replies.
I did this through my bank, I put a stop order in at 166 and the site says my average purchase price was 166.34 and the market value is 169. I paid a 25 commission (is this a fair fee?) and the value of the stocks listed is not near the true value due to what i assume to be currency conversion. Could a change in the Canadian dollar account for this, or would the bank ignore that until I sold the stocks?
If something trades in USDs it’s going to be evaluated in USDs and so will be affected by fluctuation in the value of the dollar - the same with anything traded in other currencies.
edit: That’s not to say that’s how your bank handles things though. You need to call and ask them.
The current value of a holding (at least for my ShareBuilder account) is frequently wrong. I think there is just a delay in it being updated. If you want to rule out caching as a problem you can refresh the page using Ctrl+F5 to force your browser to use the latest information from the server.
I imagine if you were to try and sell the stock right now you would see the correct value on the trade confirmation screen.
To answer the question about whether a $25 commission is fair:
I buy stocks on Scottrade.com. The fee is $5 USD per transaction. To me, $25 sounds unreasonable in the extreme.
I guess it really means what you mean by “fair”.
If the OP knew what the transaction fees were upfront and agreed to them, it would be hard to argue that they were not fair.
High? Maybe, but I’d just call it the high side of typical. Sure, you can get lower transaction fees (my bank will give me something lie 25 free trades a year), but it certainly isn’t “unreasonable in the extreme”. You look at transaction fees at most full-service brokerage houses, and I think you’d find that to be typical.
As it seems the OP is somewhat new to investing in equities, it is probably a good idea to be dealing with a full-service firm over a cut-rate outfit. For example, part of that $25 transaction fee pays for someone he can call on Tuesday (I am assuming Monday is a bank holiday in Canada even though they spell it funny) who will answer his questions, and perhaps even offer some helpful advice.