Does the “Free Ride” rule always apply to your entire collection of shares in a particular stock?
Your question is unanswerable as you haven't provided enough information. I.e. If those shares cost $1000 and you have $50000 ( or any number above $1000) of cash available in the account then you can't possibly free ride. I think your understanding of the free ride rule is incorrect. Basically what this rule is stating is that you have to have the cash when the trade is placed in order to settle the trade. Otherwise you are taking on margin (which you can't do in a cash account). So at order entry you have to have the cash to cover the purchase so it's able to be settled. If you do, no problem and you can sell that stock before trade settlement. There is no law that says you have to hold it past trade settlement. However, you cannot spend the same dollar more than once before it settles.  This site does a good job explaining this more throughly with examples: http://www.invest-faq.com/articles/trade-day-free-ride.html "You should check with your broker for details, but you can generally specify which ""lot"" you are selling.  where I've seen it, that's done by concurrently sending a ""letter of instruction"" documenting your choice of lot concurrent with the sale, but different brokers may handle this differently.  I would think this should work for the case that you describe. (In addition, the default rule used by your broker is ""probably"" first-in-first-out, which will do what you want here.) Note that this may come into play even in a margin account to the extent that you might want to specify a lot in order to obtain (or set yourself up for later benefit of) favorable tax treatment under the long-term capital gains rules"
"You got out in time, great, but how did you know when to get back in? The internet is littered with threads by people who got out (in advance, or during), then didn't get back in in time, because the recoveries didn't 'feel real'. Some people are still sitting out, just hoping against hope the market crashes - but it probably won't to those 2009 levels.  I recommend looking at [Trinity Study](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates) results as a place to start getting a sense of portfolio longevity when totally out of the market. The reality is that all cash (which is basically a zero-duration bond) is a dangerous position, as is all stocks. A balanced portfolio gives you diversification, the only ""free lunch"" in investing.  Better to not try and time your way in and out of the market, but rather glide within a range (Benjamin Graham recommends no more/less than 75/25, 25/75). If you want to skip the research headaches, stick with a 'total bond' or 'intermediate-term bond' fund (or Google around for 'lazy portfolios').  The real key is not to let emotions drive your decisions - it always 'feels different this time' until it isn't. Much better to set a target portfolio of stocks/bonds (rule of thumb: imagine you might lose half the stock portion in a downturn) then ride it out. That way you don't have to worry about being at one extreme or the other." It is a general truism but the reasons are that the rules change dramatically when you simply have more capital. Here are some examples, limited to particular kinds of markets: Under $2,000 in capital Nobody is going to offer you a margin account, and if you do get one it isn't with the best broker on commissions and other capabilities. So this means cash only trading, enjoy your 3 business day settlement periods. This means no shorting, confining a trader to only buy and hold strategies, making them more dependent on luck than a more capable trader. This means it is more expensive to buy stock, since you have to put down 100% of the cash to hold a share, whereas someone with more money puts down less capital to hold the exact same number of shares. This means no covered options strategies or spreads, again limiting the market directions where a trader could earn Under $25,000 in capital In the stock market, the pattern day trader rule applies to retail margin accounts with a balance under $25,000 and this severally limits the kinds of trades you are able to take because of the limit in the number of trades you can take in a given time period. Forget managing a multi-leg option position when the market isn't moving your direction. Under $125,000 in capital Worse margin rules. You excluded portfolio margin from your post, but it is a key part of the answer Over $1,000,000 in capital Participate in private placements, regulation D offerings reserved for accredited investors. These days, as buy and hold investments, these generally have more growth potential than publicly traded offerings. Over $5,000,000 in capital You can easily get the compliance and risk manager to turn the other way on margin rules. This is not conjecture, leverage up to infinity, try not to bankrupt yourself and the trading firm. In general, how does a large open market stock sale affect prices? A very general answer, all other things being equal, the price will move down. However there is nothing general. It depends on total number of shares in market and total turn over for that specific shares. The order book for the day etc. What is the maximum percentage of a company you could sell per day before the trading freezes, and what factors matter? Every stock exchange has rules that would determine when a particular stock would be suspended from trading, generally a 10-20% swing [either ways]. Generally highly liquid stock or stock during initial listing are exempt from such limits as they are left to arrive the market price ...  A large sell order may or may not swing the price for it to get suspended. At times even a small order may do ... again it is specific to a particular stock. "Time-Barred Debts and STATE STATUTES OF LIMITATION ON COLLECTING DEBTS are good places to start on the issues of what can be collected and for how long. What seems to be at issue is bankruptcy vs. time-barred debts vs. what creditors (original debt owners, not collection agencies or those who buy debt) can do. You should also check out The Fair Credit Reporting Act which governs some of the question.  The Fair Credit Reporting Act and the section on time-barred debts applies to collection agencies, etc. (so-called debt owners as pointed out by @littleadv, since they buy debt from the creditors) not actual creditors (those the debt is/was originally owed to). Creditors (those to whom the debt was originally owed) have different rules than debt collectors and can do things debt collectors can't. State law generally governs what creditors, as original owners of the debt, can do legally and for how long. Bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal action that frees someone from paying all or part of debt owed (they are crying ""Uncle!"" and stating they don't have enough money to pay their creditors). On a credit report, accounts will generally be updated to show “included in bankruptcy"" or similar. Debt that is determined to still be owed often will be reduced in amount/payments. Time-barred Debts Time-barred debts are debts that are still owed, but cannot be collected through direct legal action (suing). Each state has its own statute of limitations on how long different types of debt can be collected by suing after initial default before being considered time-barred. This period is typically 3-6 years but a few states such as Kentucky allow much longer time periods (up to 15 years). Being a time-barred debt does NOT prevent a collector from contacting someone about a debt. Collectors can still try to collect a debt forever -- and probably will -- but they can't normally sue and collect payment once the statute of limitations period has passed. There are gotchas with time-barred debts regarding collection, however, which can make them still legally actionable. Making any payment, no matter how small, making a verbal commitment to pay or even acknowledging the time-barred debt is often enough to make the debt legally collectable, even if it would normally be past the statute of limitations for collection. This is again state-dependent, but it is a pitfall for many people. The process of making a debt collectable again is often called ""re-aging"". Re-aging essentially means the clock starts anew on the statute of limitations, extending the time that a creditor may use the courts to collect that debt. If someone is taken to court over a time-barred debt that is legally noncollectable (has not been legally re-aged), nothing happens to them. However, being time-barred does not prevent legal action in the sense that you still have to prove the debt is time-barred and noncollectable in court if your sued over it.  Being time-barred does not mean the debt ""dissolves"". A debt is always owed unless the debt has been forgiven or discharged in bankruptcy court. This means that, combined with the ability of debt collectors to contact someone about out of statute debt and the pitfalls of re-aging, it is entirely possible for a debt collector to get a 20 year old debt actionable again. Also note that while someone is trying to dodge a debt to make it time-barred (e.g. by not paying anything), creditors and debt collectors can still take legal action to sue over the debt, and if they get a judgment against someone, this can extend the debt indefinitely. Judgements will eventually lapse, but often only after 10 years or more, and many states allow dormant judgements to be ""revived"" within that time period. Credit Reports  Regarding credit reports, whether someone owes a debt and whether it appears on a credit report are two separate things. As previously stated, no debt ""dissolves"" or goes away unless some sort of legal action makes it so.  As far as reporting is concerned, however, most ""bad"" credit stops being reported after seven years (by federal law). That is, accounts on a credit report will be deleted seven years from the original delinquency dates of the accounts regardless of being included in bankruptcy or as time-barred debt. This assumes no legal process allows the account to continue being reported (as is often the case with re-aging). As an FYI, a bankruptcy discharge date has nothing to do with when account information will be removed from your credit report.  Note that some debts, such as tax liens, can be reported indefinitely. Should bankruptcy be considered? The decision to do bankruptcy is mostly a matter of how severe the debt is. If it is an extremely large amount and assets are very small, bankruptcy is a good route in so far as it will legally take care of a lot of loose ends and likely relieve most or all of the burden of actually owing the money. Credit-wise, 10 years is the maximum a bankruptcy (specifically) will appear on a credit report. Accounts may drop off a credit report before bankruptcy because they are past the seven years they can be legally reported. Debts owed to the state such as child support, student loans, income tax, etc. generally cannot be written off and aren't subject normal debt statute of limitations on collection.  Finally, bad credit is bad credit -- there is likely to be little difference in terms of ability to get loans between bankruptcy and attempting to dodge legal action to make debts time-barred. If the debt is significant, bankruptcy may be the only sensible option." New to investing... when I buy/sell a stock can I buy/sell at the exact market price whenever I'd like or is there more to it? Does there need to be a demand for when I'm trying to sell or am I just forcing the company to buy back my shares? Sorry if confusing/rookie question I just read the article and I'm not sure if the calculation is flawed. When they look at the single stocks. Do they always reinvest the dividends to the same stock? That would be quite unusual behaviour I think.  An investor who uses the buy and hold strategy  might have a bunch of companies which won't exist anymore in 20 or 30 years e.g. coal plants.  While many stocks are a good investment now. Reinvesting all the dividends for decades is obviously a bad decision for a large portion of the stocks.  Maybe I misunderstood the article. But what do you guys think? You'll own whatever fraction you bought. To own the company (as in, boolean - yes or no) you need to buy 100% of the outstanding stock. RE controlling the company, in general the answer is yes - although the mechanism for this might not be so straight forward (ie. you may have to appoint board members and may only be able to do so at pre-set intervals) and there may be conditions in the company charter designed to stop this happening. Depending on your jurisdiction certain ownership percentages can also trigger the need to do certain things so you may not be able to just buy 50% - in Australia when you reach 20% ownership you have to launch a formal takeover bid. "In a way yes but I doubt you'd want that. A ""Stop-Limit"" order has both stop and limit components to it but I doubt this gives you what you want. In your example, if the stock falls to $1/share then the limit order of $3/share would be triggered but this isn't quite what I'd think you'd want to see. I'd suggest considering having 2 orders: A stop order to limit losses and a limit order to sell that are separate rather than fusing them together that likely isn't going to work."