Why is Buying One Share of Stock Pointless?
First of all, buying one share of stock will never show you a profit worth talking about. If you own one share of a $30 stock and it doubles in price (which is a HUGE accomplishment) then you just made $30; big whoop. Actually, you didn’t even really make $30 because buying one share of stock still costs as much in commissions as buying 100 shares of stock (of course there are slight differences between brokers). Take the following situation for example. Your broker (most likely an online stock broker) charges $12 per trade. This means it will cost $12 to make a trade whether the trade consists of 1 share, 50 shares, or 200 shares (again, each broker will be slightly different). So lets go back to that $30 stock you want to buy. In this example, the total cost for buying one share of stock is: $30 (stock) + $12 (commission) = $42 total for the trade. This means that just to break even your $30 stock will have to increase by $12… that is a whopping 40% increase! In this case, it is un
