“Direct Stock Purchase Plans: A *Cheaper* Way to Invest?

[Patricia]

I was just reading an article about direct stock purchase plans and I am wondering what forum members think of them? I would think that an investor would want to be well diversified first before going this route.
Is anyone using direct purchase plans? If so what has been your experience with them?

[CanadianCapitalist]

I was just reading an article about direct stock purchase plans and I am wondering what forum members think of them? I would think that an investor would want to be well diversified first before going this route.
Is anyone using direct purchase plans? If so what has been your experience with them?

I don't do direct stock purchase plans, but there are plenty of resources out there. You may want to check out:

Canadian DRIP Primer (http://cdndrips.googlepages.com/)

and the Canadian DRIPs section of:

DRIP Investing Resource Center (http://www.dripinvesting.org/Default.htm).

[Sampson]

I don't do them either. Because I'm with a discount brokerage, I get charged $50 for them to issue a stock certificate.

Since I aim to hold about 40 individual stocks - if they all had the option, it would cost me $2000 just to get them all up and going.

For a select few, that offer discounts and options to buy fractional shares, I may do so, but none currently. I use the synthetic DRIP though, and often make big enough purchases that there will be at least 1 share purchased at each distribution period.