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I'm not sure I follow.

Mutual (and index) funds trade their NAV at the end of the day.

ETFs trade like stocks throughout the day.

I looked of SPY's expense ratio on Yahoo Finance, and looked up the expense ratio of the UBS fund in the prospectus using Google.

Transaction costs are a thing - many brokerages offer some no transaction fee funds, but if you buy outside that stable, they charge commissions, and i'm not sure why, but mutual fund commissions are usually a lot more than stock commissions. And now, there are lots of ways to get access to free stock and ETF trades.

The last bit about options was a little more in depth, but still (I thought) barely scratching the surface.

All I'm saying is the information is out there for everyone to find.

As for what I read, I don't even know anymore. A TON at one point. I also passed the Series 65 at one point, but never did much with it. But that was more to validate my knowledge than to create knowledge. And even though it sounds fancy ("Investment Advisor"), the test was 90% about legal and fiduciary duties, not about investments themselves - studying for the 65 won't net you much knowledge about options, trade commissions (except sternly telling you NOT to churn client accounts for your own benefit), and so forth.

Looking way back in my Amazon order history, here's a few interesting books:

Options as a strategic investment
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735201978/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Unconventional Success
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743228383/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Pioneering Portfolio Management
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416544690/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Bond Markets, Analysis, and Strategies (Cram101 Textbook Outlines (link doesn't work anymore)

There were a ton of other books, too, but I must have gotten them from places other than Amazon. But I think those three are great starting points.

The big thing is, Pioneering Portfolio Management was written for institutional investors, not us. It's still a good read. Unconventional Success is the same author applying it to regular people. I read both, but I'm not sure how well Unconventional Success stands on its own (maybe people who have read only that can chime in). And options are a great tool to learn more about; I know some people go crazy just trading calls in hopes of outsized gains, but I wouldn't recommend that. Mostly I like them because, at their simplest, they provide strategies for mitigating risk (either buying puts, or selling calls), but like i said, that risk mitigation can act as a headwind.

Hopee that's somewhat helpful?

But you're most likely better off with growth stocks than reinvesting dividends. High-dividend stocks, in general, are established companies with steady earnings. Their stock prices don't move all that much, or at least don't match/beat the market. Of course there are exceptions, but for the most part you're choosing between huge growth potential and huge dividends. Imagine if you'd bought Google (no dividend) 5 years ago versus AT&T (huge dividend). You'd be way better off with Google, regardless of reinvesting that almost 6% dividend.

You really, really should look at index funds/ETFs. You'll get a nice mix of high-dividend stocks and stocks with high growth potential.

Think about it this way: You're young and just starting. This is the best time to be making good investment decisions, because right now is when your money has the most time to grow. If you make dumb decisions now then get smart when you're 35, you've lost 10 years of time. So you want to make the best possible decision now. Don't let youthful confidence make you think you know better than the tried-and-true advise. If investing in high-dividend stocks when you were young was the smartest strategy, that would be the tried-and-true advice... but it isn't. A three-fund portfolio of indexes is.

You're clearly doing the right thing starting young and seeking out advice. I'd suggest spending $15 and a day of time reading Bogelhead's Guide to Investing. It covers all the basics about what to look for, and explains why a three-fund portfolio is smart... so you can know for yourself instead of taking random internet advice. Pretty small investment of time/money to set yourself out on the right foot when it matters the most.

I have etrade. If they were added by the company then there shouldn't be transaction fees. A brokerage account at etrade charges 7.95 per trade. If you do more than 30 trades a quarter then they'll drop that to 4.95. With that little in the account right now, 7.95 is a lot and will eat away at your money quick if you get into trading too much.
Someone else mentioned taxes, which will also erode your money if you sell before a year and a day. Long term capital gains mean you pay less in taxes on the money you make.
Now to the important part - this is your first stock experience, and you can get AAPL regularly at a 15% discount at a time when it's trading at a discount -- Do nothing, seriously. Lose your password and keep contributing to that purchase program. When you get about 5-10k in there, sure, diversify by adding a few good stocks or maybe an index fund.
You've got a great company at a great price; all you should be thinking about is buying more. Apple stock rewards the patient. Look back in a year or two and you'd kick yourself for selling in the 160s.
I've owned shares since about mid 2017. My first purchase of 30 shares was not even at as good a price as you got, i was in the 150's. Then it ran up to 225 or so last year, I sold half my position and took some profits up about 45%. It dropped in q4, so I stocked back up to just over 50 shares, again in the 150's. This is a stock that will come in and out of favor. But low, wait a year or two, sell high, repeat.
Finally here's a great entry level book on investing. Its short, cheap and has solid advice. https://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Guide-Investing-Money-Smart/dp/1477463992/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1549074984&sr=1-6&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=investing+for+beginners&dpPl=1&dpID=513T3piRHAL&ref=plSrch
sorry for such a long post, but you've got a good opportunity here and it sounds like you just need a little knowledge & patience. Good luck!

> What are some ways of identifying which stock to go after? Are there any particularly useful websites you use that help with this?

With only 1k using questrade you definitely shouldn't be actively trading like other people recommend. Even investing your entire account into one trade will cost you 1% ($5 on the buy, $5 on the sell) so it'll be impossible. Figure out if you want to be growth oriented or value oriented. Growth stocks are more expensive from a valuation perspective and have huge potential but also huge risk. Think of Facebook, Tesla, Netflix. Value stocks are stocks believed to have strong fundamentals and trade at a cheap valuation. These are a lot less exciting and generally lower risk/reward but can be the foundation for a stable long term portfolio. If you genuinely want to get into investing, read http://www.amazon.ca/The-Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing/dp/0060555661 pretty much the bible for investing. Also be weary of technical trading and patterns etc, people often fall into the trap of seeing something in complete randomness. Personally I'm a value investor and I work in equity research so studying companies is what I do for a living.

> A limit order is an order to buy (or sell) at a specified price or better. A buy limit order (a limit order to buy) can only be executed at the specified limit price or lower. Conversely, a sell limit order (a limit order to sell) will be executed at the specified limit price or higher.

http://www.investopedia.com/university/intro-to-order-types/limit-orders.asp

 

We can start with a very simple answer to your question. It first depends on how much stock Albert is willing to buy and how much stock Steve is willing to sell.

 

Bids

10.52 200

10.53 500

 

If Steve puts in a sell order at 10.52 for 500 shares or fewer, he will be filled at 10.53. If Steve puts in a sell order for 600-700 shares, he will be filled at 10.53 for 500 shares and 10.52 for 200 shares.

The more complicated answer to your question depends on which exchange you route your order to and on which exchange the bids and offers exist. There's not just one "stock exchange" or two - Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange - but rather many places where bids and offers exist in the market.

 

Bids

10.52 200 ARCA

10.53 200 ARCA

10.53 100 BATS

10.53 300 EDGA

 

If Steve sends an order to sell 300 shares at 10.53 on EDGA, he will get filled on 300 shares from EDGA. If he sends an order to sell 500 shares on EDGA, he will get filled on 300 shares from EDGA and possibly be able to get the other 200 shares at 10.53. The reason this is so complicated is that high frequency traders are able to get to the other exchanges quicker than Steve's order is able to get from EDGA to ARCA and BATS to get the other stock. So we can only be sure that Steve's order will be filled in the size listed on the exchange to where he sends the order. This concept is explained in Flash Boys.

 

In essence, your questions are a bit too simplified because orders are placed with respect to a size, price, exchange, and a host of other properties. Some orders are even hidden!

 

TL;DR Steve's order will fill first at 10.53 for whatever stock he can get and then finish at 10.52 if there is enough stock there to finish the size on his order. Albert's order will fill in the converse. Buy limit allow you to purchase a stock at that price or lower. Sell limit orders allow you to sell stock at that price or higher.

We all love the stock market. Yeah, but slightly off base here. Baseball betting, it's legal in New Jersey now. If you are into stats and ALGO seems like a natural, picked 6 winners in a row. That's never happened to me in the market. :-)

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Baseball is all stats, if you put your time into it, think you can come out ahead. Lots.

Back to the dow ... :-)

Here's a former trader saying how he does it:


\> Trading Bases: How a Wall Street Trader Made a Fortune Betting on Baseball

https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Bases-Fortune-Betting-Baseball/dp/0451415175/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

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Personally I think trying to buy something just because you think it may be cheap is a recipe for disaster. Do you really think you know something more about this company than the 100s of professional analysts and funds that cover this space? Maybe you do but the the odds are not in your favor.

Don't get me wrong, I think there is value in "value investing" meaning that company stock prices have a tendency to mean revert and decent companies that have their stock prices beat down are often good pickups historically, however, I would not risk real money doing that on a stock by stock basis and instead diversify this bet by building a basket of "cheap" but decent stocks and using it in a portfolio.

I just finished a pretty good book called "The Acquirers Multiple" which covers a strategy similar to this which (historically) has done really well at beating the market returns. Link for those that are interested: https://www.amazon.com/Acquirers-Multiple-Billionaire-Contrarians-Market/dp/0692928855/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511203991&sr=8-1&keywords=aquirers+multiple

Trading options is more complex than trading binary instruments (stocks, fx, futures, etc) as there are a lot more moving parts. Options are like ternary instruments, they allow one to profit if the underlying goes up, down, or sideways. Best way to get started is to learn what a put and a call are. Then move onto basic positions. The best approach I can recommend is to pickup a beginners book. I read this - the first version - which taught me the ropes quickly. I also picked up several other books afterwards that got into the subject on a deeper and more technical level. One of the most fascinating things I've learned so far is what implied volatility is. See another post. With IV you can work out statistically the chances of a trade profiting. Like someone else mentioned, www.tastytrade.com, a free streaming live options talk show, is based on statistical trading and not trading on fear/hope.

Traditionally, iron condors are traded with index ETF options such as the SPY or IWM. There's obviously less risk of a massive move in a short amount of time. Though black swans do exist, see 2008, euro crisis, debt ceiling, etc. If the s&p or the russel stays in your IC's range until it expires, you win. You profit on theta decay this way. Since ICs are short volatility, there was a huge drop in NFLX implied vol today -went from 70sh to 50sh. That 20 some odd point drop in IV alone amounted to over 50% of $4800. The rest was from theta decay and delta.

I found this to be a pretty good resource from a non-biased source. Granted it gets decently technical and doesn't read like a novel.. but if you're actually interested -- should be worth the skim. (particularly the section on market-micro-structure). There's probably a better book out there more focused specifically on market-micro-structure, but I haven't read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Algorithmic-Trading-Portfolio-Management/dp/0124016898/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1412367379&sr=8-5&keywords=algorithmic+trading

If you want the full backstory, here’s a good book
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-TurtleTrader-Investors-Overnight-Millionaires/dp/0061241717

Basically in the 1980s two billionaires decided to settle a bet between themselves. One of them believed that successful trading could be taught to anyone and the other believed that successful trading was a god given skill that could not be taught. They ran their experiment over the course of 5 years and it was wildly successful

Well, if you're looking for a good book for beginning traders, may I humbly recommend mine. I wrote it specifically for beginning traders.

As for my analysis: make sure you trust yourself before you trust anyone else, ok?

Are you newer to investing? Not judging, just offering tools to become more knowledgeable!

If you are check out the following:

The Intelligent Investor: this is a classic book on investing, a must read - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060555661/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Pgh9Bb44B9X7W

The Simple Path to Wealth: NOT A GET RICH QUICK SCHEME. might not be everyone's cup of tea, but a great quick read. Good for retirement and more of a passive investment - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1533667926/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_6ih9BbYWRWH38

If you don’t already know the basics of the market (ETFs, bonds, options, order types), I just finished reading this book and it is an easy read that covers all the basics.

I think the Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is a universal recommendation for investing strategy and fundamentals. It’s kind of a hard read because it can be boring as shit some times- which is why I did an audio book instead. Get a free audible trial and they give you one book free. Use it for that and take notes as you listen would be my advice.

Robinhood is probably the best option for new investors. If you sign up for web portal access it gets better. Especially with small initial amounts you don’t want to be eating up your returns with commission fees.

In my personal opinion, Jason Kelly's book linked below was a great Stock Market 101 book, very easy to read:

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0452298628/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_6KEpDbFEAJ12Z

I highly recommend it!

https://www.amazon.com/Economist-Guide-Financial-Markets-6th/dp/1610393899

That book will give you a great start. Starting out, it's easy to think "i don't care about bonds, or currency, or liquidity just tell me what stocks are going up!" At least that's where I was.

This book will help you understand how it all fits together, and give you the high level understanding to decide where to dive deeper.

Richard Lehman - Far from Random. This is a great look at technical trading.

https://www.amazon.com/Far-Random-Investor-Behavior-Analysis/dp/1576603237

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James Cloonan - Investing at Level 3 - A book based on years of trading and knowledge from the Founder of AAII.

https://www.aaii.com/level3

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Subscribe to Cabot Wealth Daily Newsletter

https://cabotwealth.com/reports/

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Long Term Capital Management - When Genius Failed Roger Lowenstein. A great read for when you think you are getting a handle on trading and decide to skip the fundamentals such as leverage control.

https://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Capital-Management-ebook/dp/B00HY59G7C

I'm a semi informed guy on stocks but totally clueless on options. Just started reading 'understanding options" by Michael sincere. It's a 2014 2nd edition. Seems to be pretty good so far.. seems to be geared toward beginners
http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Options-2E-Michael-Sincere/dp/0071817840/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395119091&sr=8-1&keywords=understanding+options

The (bitcoin & all other) market's currently self-reinforcing behavior is best described by Stan Weinstein.

https://www.amazon.com/Weinsteins-Secrets-Profiting-Personal-Investment/dp/1556236832/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504557077&sr=8-1&keywords=secrets+to+profiting+in+bull+and+bear+markets

Current 200dma is 2187 on a steep positive slope

The Intelligent Investor is a great beginner's book that Warren Buffet swears by

The grandaddy of them all is "The Intelligent Investor" Benjamin Graham. "By far the best book on investing ever written." --Warren Bufett

Check out this book man. I'm just starting as well and its really helped explain things. Well put together and it's pretty cheap.

https://www.amazon.com/Neatest-Little-Guide-Market-Investing/dp/0452298628

The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is a must.
http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Practical/dp/0060555661

I also have a PDF copy of Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman.
http://financetrends.blogspot.com/2008/08/seth-klarman-margin-of-safety-pdf.html