Drip Investing :: NetstockDirect vs. BUYandHOLD
66Buyandhold Challenges Netstockdirect in Drip Investments
You can enroll in a company's Drip plan through several ways. A primary requirement is that you need at least one share of that company's stock. You can get hold of this share through a broker, a Drip service or even a friend. For companies which do not offer Drips such as Microsoft, Cisco Systems, American Online etc. or with companies which have expensive fees in their Drip plans, you can consider Drip-investing services such as BuyandHold.com or NetstockDirect.com.
Netstockdirect is a direct investor website which offers a long list of companies with direct investment plans which are updated on a daily basis. You can enroll in any of the hundreds of companies which offer direct stock plans through Netstockdirect. The site lists more than 1,600 plans some of which require as little as $25 to start. You can also buy fractions of shares as opposed to the usual 100 shares. The site also allows you to buy dollar-based quantities of various kinds of stocks. For example, if somebody has $200 to invest every month, they can divide it into $50 portions and put it into four different stocks, paying just around $8 per transaction in the process.
ShareBuilder is Netstock's discount brokerage-type service. ShareBuilder has a lot of features which would be very attractive for the long-term investor. Via ShareBuilder, you can invest in the Drip manner, i.e.; through fractional shares, dollar cost averaging and reinvest dividends, even in companies which do not offer ‘Drips' for a reasonable price. The company also offers mutual fund direct enrollment services. In general, the transaction costs here are lower than with a broker.
BuyandHold is another site very similar to Netstock. Through the site, you can buy fractional shares, reinvest dividends free of cost and also dollar cost average. BuyandHold charges $6.99 per month which includes around two buys a month. Every additional buy will cost you $2.99. Thus you can have unlimited monthly transactions for $14.99 a month.
Another option is to open an IRA account and pay just $2.99 per trade. BuyandHold requires only a minimum of 20$ to open an account and offers more than 1400 stocks through their services. Customers can buy and sell stocks daily twice on a daily basis for just $2.99 per transaction. They also offer automatic investment plans on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis thus making dollar cost averaging easy.
Asha Prakash
Hi-Tech Editorial Division
