Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

Can I buy stocks directly from a public company?
This is allowed somewhat infrequently.  You can often purchase stocks through DRIPs which might have little or no commission.  For example Duke Energy (DUK) runs their plan internally, so you are buying from them directly.  There is no setup fee, or reinvestment fee.  There is a fee to sell. Other companies might have someone else manage the DRIP but might subsidize some transaction costs giving you low cost to invest.  Often DRIPs charge relatively large amounts to sell and they are not very nimble if trading is what you are after. You can also go to work for a company, and often they allow you to buy stock from them at a discount (around 15% discount is common). You can use a discount broker as well.  TradeKing, which is not the lowest cost broker, allows buys and sells at 4.95 per trade.  If trading 100 shares that is similar in cost to the DUK DRIP.