Does owning BP ADR from US stock market required to pay custody fees
"New SEC rules also now allow brokers to collect fees on non-dividend bearing accounts as an ""ADR Pass-Through Fee"". Since BP (and BP ADR) is not currently paying dividends, this is probably going to be the case here. According to the Schwab brokerage firm, the fee is usually 1-3 cents per share. I did an EDGAR search for BP's documents and came up with too many to read through (due to the oil spill and all of it's related SEC filings) but you can start here: http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/m/q207/adr.html" Rules appear to be changing (21NOV2014) Aviva Plc. AV on NYSE pass thru fee is 0.02 cents per ADR but that equals 11% deduction from ADR dividend. For utility or insurance stock that is significant ongoing fee. Registrar in US is Citibank, could be specific to them. This is the first for me except some modest fees on indonesian ADR. Information very difficult to find. Buy and hold OZ investor.
"This answer will expand a bit on the theory. :) A company, as an entity, represents a pile of value. Some of that is business value (the revenue stream from their products) and some of that is assets (real estate, manufacturing equipment, a patent portfolio, etc). One of those assets is cash. If you own a share in the company, you own a share of all those assets, including the cash. In a theoretical sense, it doesn't really matter whether the company holds the cash instead of you. If the company adds an extra $1 billion to its assets, then people who buy and sell the company will think ""hey, there's an extra $1 billion of cash in that company; I should be willing to pay $1 billion / shares outstanding more per share to own it than I would otherwise."" Granted, you may ultimately want to turn your ownership into cash, but you can do that by selling your shares to someone else. From a practical standpoint, though, the company doesn't benefit from holding that cash for a long time. Cash doesn't do much except sit in bank accounts and earn pathetically small amounts of interest, and if you wanted pathetic amounts of interests from your cash you wouldn't be owning shares in a company, you'd have it in a bank account yourself. Really, the company should do something with their cash. Usually that means investing it in their own business, to grow and expand that business, or to enhance profitability. Sometimes they may also purchase other companies, if they think they can turn a profit from the purchase. Sometimes there aren't a lot of good options for what to do with that money. In that case, the company should say, ""I can't effectively use this money in a way which will grow my business. You should go and invest it yourself, in whatever sort of business you think makes sense."" That's when they pay a dividend. You'll see that a lot of the really big global companies are the ones paying dividends - places like Coca-Cola or Exxon-Mobil or what-have-you. They just can't put all their cash to good use, even after their growth plans. Many people who get dividends will invest them in the stock market again - possibly purchasing shares of the same company from someone else, or possibly purchasing shares of another company. It doesn't usually make a lot of sense for the company to invest in the stock market themselves, though. Investment expertise isn't really something most companies are known for, and because a company has multiple owners they may have differing investment needs and risk tolerance. For instance, if I had a bunch of money from the stock market I'd put it in some sort of growth stock because I'm twenty-something with a lot of savings and years to go before retirement. If I were close to retirement, though, I would want it in a more stable stock, or even in bonds. If I were retired I might even spend it directly. So the company should let all its owners choose, unless they have a good business reason not to. Sometimes companies will do share buy-backs instead of dividends, which pays money to people selling the company stock. The remaining owners benefit by reducing the number of shares outstanding, so they own more of what's left. They should only do this if they think the stock is at a fair price, or below a fair price, for the company: otherwise the remaining owners are essentially giving away cash. (This actually happens distressingly often.) On the other hand, if the company's stock is depressed but it subsequently does better than the rest of the market, then it is a very good investment. The one nice thing about share buy-backs in general is that they don't have any immediate tax implications for the company's owners: they simply own a stock which is now more valuable, and can sell it (and pay taxes on that sale) whenever they choose." There is a measure of protection for investors. It is not the level of protection provided by FDIC or NCUA but it does exist: Securities Investor Protection Corporation What SIPC Protects SIPC protects against the loss of cash and securities – such as stocks   and bonds – held by a customer at a financially-troubled SIPC-member   brokerage firm. The limit of SIPC protection is $500,000, which   includes a $250,000 limit for cash. Most customers of failed brokerage   firms when assets are missing from customer accounts are protected.   There is no requirement that a customer reside in or be a citizen of   the United States. A non-U.S. citizen with an account at a brokerage   firm that is a member of SIPC is treated the same as a resident or   citizen of the United States with an account at a brokerage firm that   is a member of SIPC. SIPC protection is limited. SIPC only protects the custody function of   the broker dealer, which means that SIPC works to restore to customers   their securities and cash that are in their accounts when the   brokerage firm liquidation begins. SIPC does not protect against the decline in value of your securities.   SIPC does not protect individuals who are sold worthless stocks and   other securities. SIPC does not protect claims against a broker for   bad investment advice, or for recommending inappropriate investments. It is important to recognize that SIPC protection is not the same as   protection for your cash at a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation   (FDIC) insured banking institution because SIPC does not protect the   value of any security. Investments in the stock market are subject to fluctuations in market   value. SIPC was not created to protect these risks. That is why SIPC   does not bail out investors when the value of their stocks, bonds and   other investment falls for any reason. Instead, in a liquidation, SIPC   replaces the missing stocks and other securities when it is possible   to do so. "Indexes are down during the summer time, and I don't think it has something to do with specific stocks. If you look at the index history you'll see that there's a price drop during the summer time. Google ""Sell in May and go away"". The BP was cheap at the time for a very particular reason. As another example of a similar speculation you can look at Citibank, which was less than $1 at its lowest, and within less than a year went to over $4 ( more than 400%). But, when it was less than $1 - it was very likely for C to go bankrupt, and it required a certain amount of willingness to loose to invest in it. Looking back, as with BP, it paid off well. But - that is looking back. So to address your question - there's no place where people tell you what will go up, because people who know (or think they know) will invest themselves, or buy lottery tickets. There's research, analysts, and ""frinds' suggestions"" which sometimes pay off (as in your example with BP), and sometimes don't. How much of it is noise - I personally don't think I can tell, until I can look back and say ""Damn, that dude was right about shorts on Google, it did go down 90% in 2012!""" I was in a similar situation with my now 6 year old.  So I'll share what I chose.  Like you, I was already funding a 529. So I opened a custodial brokerage account with Fidelity and chose to invest in very low expense index fund ETFs which are sponsored by Fidelity, so there are no commissions.  The index funds have a low turnover as well, so they tend to be minimal on capital gains. As mentioned in the other answer, CDs aren't paying anything right now.  And given your long time to grow, investing in the stock market is a decent bet. However, I would steer clear of any insurance products.  They tend to be heavy on fees and low on returns.  Insurance is for insuring something not for investing. "Before the prevalence of electronic trading, trading stocks was very costly, dropping from ~15c in the late 1970s to less than a nickel per share today.  Exchange fees for liquidity takers are ~0.3c per share, currently. When orders were negotiated exclusively by humans, stocks used to be quoted in fractions rather than decimal, such as $50 1/2 instead of something more precise like $50.02. That necessary ease of negotiation for humans to rapidly trade extended to trade size as well.  Traders preferred to handle orders in ""round lots"", 100 shares, for ease of calculation of the total cost of the trade, so 100 shares at $50 1/2 would have a total cost of $5,050.  The time for a human to calculate an ""odd lot"" of 72 shares at $50.02 would take much longer so would cost more per share, and these costs were passed on to the client. These issues have been negated by electronic trading and simply no longer exist except for obsolete brokerages.  There are cost advantages for extremely large trades, well above 100 shares per trade. Brokerage fees today run the gamut: they can be as insignificant as what Interactive Brokers charges to as high as a full service broker that could charge hundreds of USD for a few thousand USD trade.  With full service brokerages, the charges are frequently mystifying and quoted at the time a trade is requested.  With discount brokerages, there is usually a fee per trade and a fee per share or contract.  Interactive Brokers will charge a fee per share or option only and will even refund parts of the liquidity rebates exchanges provide, as close as possible to having a seat on an exchange.  Even if a trader does not meet Interactive Brokers' minimum trading requirement, the monthly fee is so low that it is possible that a buy and hold investor could benefit from the de minimis trade fees. It should be noted that liquidity providing hidden orders are typically not rebated but are at least discounted. The core costs of all trades are the exchange fees which are per share or contract.  Over the long run, costs charged by brokers will be in excess of charges by exchanges, and Interactive Brokers' fee schedule shows that it can be reduced to a simple markup over exchange fees.   Exchanges sometimes have a fee schedule with lower charges for larger trades, but these are out of reach of the average individual." You say you're not on speaking terms: so you do it via your lawyer. You're divorced: so IMO your obligations are: a) To your kids  b) Purely financial spousal support (if any) If she's irresponsible financially then maybe she isn't the best able to care for your children. Your lawyer ought to be able to tell you what the alternatives are (it's very state-specific so no general advice from the Internet, but if your lawyer can't do that then IMO you need a different lawyer who has more experience with divorce/custody cases). I can't speak for all brokerages but the one I use requires cash accounts to have cash available to purchase the stock in this situation. With the cash available you would be able to purchase the stock if the option was exercised.  Hope this helps This is a bit complicated because of all the moving parts, but is a little simpler because the two warrants are now publicly traded.  The main rule appears to be that your cost should be apportioned into the bases for the pieces you received by the proportions of the prices established in the market on the first day of trading in which they trade separately (source: costbasis.com).  Since the A and B GM warrants began trading in March 2011 (at least that's what a quick search shows), use their prices and the GM price on the same day to establish the proportions.  You also must include the factor of how much of each piece you received for each of your bonds. So, for example, if the prices of GM, WSA, and WSB, were $32, $23, and $17 on the first day of trading, and you got 3 shares GM, 2 A warrants, and 1 B warrant for your bonds, their worth on first day of separate trading would be: and so the proportion of your bond cost to be allocated to your A warrants, for instance, would be 46/159 or about 28.9% using these example figures. The small dribbles of additional securities you have received already, I would include in the calculation above, and if you in the future receive any further dribbles, I would assign them a basis of $0 (as your full bond cost would have already been completely allocated).