There are online sites, like TradeKing and MerrillEdge that will enable you to make trades for $4.95 to $6.95 apiece. The trade-off for not using a full-service brokerage is that you have to do your own homework when it comes to stock-picking. Online brokerages won’t do it for you. At least some offer online tools like risk-tolerance questionnaires.
If you want to buy Boyd Gaming – or any other major casino stock – there's no getting around some kind of brokerage fee because the gaming group doesn't offer any direct purchase plans, which cut out the middleman. This is unfortunate, because no-load stocks can be purchased through automatic monthly withdrawals from your checking or savings account (in some cases this can be a trade-off for waiving a minimal initial purchase), or through a transfer agent. But even these come with associated fees (Coca-Cola has a whole slew of them), no it's not a no-cost proposition, even if it applies to gaming stocks – which it doesn’t. Also, there can be high minimum-entry levels for investments: Proctor & Gamble's is $250, for instance.
If you've gone the low-cost, online-brokerage route, one way of buying additional stock is a DRIP … a dividend reinvestment plan. Commission fees tend to be low and you can buy fractional shares this way. However, there is no flexibility when you make the purchases. On the plus side, they are often commission-free. By contrast, if you don’t know what stocks you wish to purchase, you can find yourself in a mutual fund, where the fund manager picks the stocks and charges you as much as $50 per transaction for the privilege.
One other argument in favor of brokerages versus direct investments is that the latter can cut off access to blue-chip stocks. Even the mostly highly regarded stock in the gaming universe, Wynn Resorts, is not available for direct purchase. Multiple direct investments also require multiple, separate accounts, which ought to make you very busy around tax time.
Since you can’t buy Boyd or MGM Resorts International or Las Vegas Sands directly, we'd urge you to comparison-shop online brokerages. Find out which one charges the least-onerous commission and yet provides the most flexibility when it comes to reinvesting the money you will (we hope) make on the market. Boyd, incidentally, is considered one of Wall Street's more undervalued stocks, so you’ve picked a good point of entry. Happy trading!
