Long term drip (dividend reinvestment plan) stock
"If you sold the stock for a profit, you will owe tax on that profit. Whether it is taxed as short-term or long-term capital gains depends on how long you held the stock before selling it. Presumably you're going to invest this money into mutual funds or something of that sort. Those may pay dividends which can be reinvested, and will grow in value (you hope) just as the individual stock shares would (you hope). Assuming the advice you've been given is at all reasonable, there's no need for buyer's remorse here; you're just changing your investing style to a different point on the risk-versus-return curve. (If you have to ask this question, I tend to agree that you should do more homework before playing with shares in individual companieS ... unless you're getting thess shares at employee discount, in which case you should still seriously consider selling them fairly quickly and reinvesting the money in a more structured manner. In a very real sense your job is itself an ""investment"" in your employer; if they ever get into trouble you don't want that to hit both your income and investments.)" There are ETFs and mutual funds that pay dividends. Mutual funds and ETFs are quite similar. Your advisor is correct regarding future funds you invest. But you already had incurred the risk of buying an individual stock. That is a 'sunk cost'. If you were satisfied with the returns you could have retained the HD stock you already owned and just put future moneys into an ETF or mutual fund.  BTW: does your advisor receive a commission from your purchase of a mutual fund? That may have been his motivation to give you the advice to sell your existing holdings.
What is your investing goal? And what do you mean by investing? Do you necessarily mean investing in the stock market or are you just looking to grow your money? Also, will you be able to add to that amount on a regular basis going forward? If you are just looking for a way to get $100 into the stock market, your best option may be DRIP investing. (DRIP stands for Dividend Re-Investment Plan.) The idea is that you buy shares in a company (typically directly from the company) and then the money from the dividends are automatically used to buy additional fractional shares. Most DRIP plans also allow you to invest additional on a monthly basis (even fractional shares). The advantages of this approach for you is that many DRIP plans have small upfront requirements. I just looked up Coca-cola's and they have a $500 minimum, but they will reduce the requirement to $50 if you continue investing $50/month. The fees for DRIP plans also generally fairly small which is going to be important to you as if you take a traditional broker approach too large a percentage of your money will be going to commissions. Other stock DRIP plans may have lower monthly requirements, but don't make your decision on which stock to buy based on who has the lowest minimum: you only want a stock that is going to grow in value. They primary disadvantages of this approach is that you will be investing in a only a single stock (I don't believe that can get started with a mutual fund or ETF with $100), you will be fairly committed to that stock, and you will be taking a long term investing approach. The Motley Fool investing website also has some information on DRIP plans : http://www.fool.com/DRIPPort/HowToInvestDRIPs.htm . It's a fairly old article, but I imagine that many of the links still work and the principles still apply If you are looking for a more medium term or balanced investment, I would advise just opening an online savings account. If you can grow that to $500 or $1,000 you will have more options available to you. Even though savings accounts don't pay significant interest right now, they can still help you grow your money by helping you segregate your money and make regular deposits into savings. "A mutual fund could make two different kinds of distributions to you: Capital gains: When the fund liquidates positions that it holds, it may realize a gain if it sells the assets for a greater price than the fund purchased them for. As an example, for an index fund, assets may get liquidated if the underlying index changes in composition, thus requiring the manager to sell some stocks and purchase others. Mutual funds are required to distribute most of their income that they generate in this way back to its shareholders; many often do this near the end of the calendar year.  When you receive the distribution, the gains will be categorized as either short-term (the asset was held for less than one year) or long-term (vice versa). Based upon the holding period, the gain is taxed differently. Currently in the United States, long-term capital gains are only taxed at 15%, regardless of your income tax bracket (you only pay the capital gains tax, not the income tax). Short-term capital gains are treated as ordinary income, so you will pay your (probably higher) tax rate on any cash that you are given by your mutual fund. You may also be subject to capital gains taxes when you decide to sell your holdings in the fund. Any profit that you made based on the difference between your purchase and sale price is treated as a capital gain. Based upon the period of time that you held the mutual fund shares, it is categorized as a short- or long-term gain and is taxed accordingly in the tax year that you sell the shares. Dividends: Many companies pay dividends to their stockholders as a way of returning a portion of their profits to their collective owners. When you invest in a mutual fund that owns dividend-paying stocks, the fund is the ""owner"" that receives the dividend payments. As with capital gains, mutual funds will redistribute these dividends to you periodically, often quarterly or annually. The main difference with dividends is that they are always taxed as ordinary income, no matter how long you (or the fund) have held the asset. I'm not aware of Texas state tax laws, so I can't comment on your other question." Dividend reinvestment plans are a great option for some of your savings. By making small, regular investments, combined with reinvested dividends, you can accumulate a significant nest egg. Pick a medium to large cap company that looks to be around for the foreseeable future, such as JNJ, 3M, GE, or even Exxon. These companies typically raise their dividends every year or so, and this can be a significant portion of your long term gains. Plus, these programs are usually offered with miniscule fees. Also, have a go at the interest rate formulas contained in your favorite spreadsheet application. Calculate the FutureValue of a series of payments at various interest rates, to see what you can expect. While you cannot depend on earning a specific rate with a stock investment, a basic familiarity with the formula can help you determine a rate of return you should aim for. Instead of giving part of their profits back as dividends, management puts it back into the company so the company can grow and produce higher profits. When these companies do well, there is high demand for them as in the long term higher profits equates to a higher share price. So if a company invests in itself to grow its profits higher and higher, one of the main reasons investors will buy the shares, is in the expectation of future capital gains. In fact just because a company pays a dividend, would you still buy it if the share price kept decreasing year after year? Lets put it this way: Company A makes record profits year after year, continually keeps beating market expectations, its share price keeps going up, but it pays no dividend instead reinvests its profits to continually grow the business. Company B pays a dividend instead of reinvesting to grow the business, it has been surprising the market on the downside for a few years now, it has had some profit warnings lately and its share price has consistently been dropping for over a year. Which company would you be interested in buying out of the two? I know I would be interested in buying Company A, and I would definitely stay away from Company B. Company A may or may not pay dividends in the future, but if Company B continues on this path it will soon run out of money to pay dividends. Most market gains are made through capital gains rather than dividends, and most people invest in the hope the shares they buy go up in price over time. Dividends can be one attractant to investors but they are not the only one. "Yahoo Finance is definitely a good one, and its ultimately the source of the data that a lot of other places use (like the iOS Stocks app), because of their famous API. Another good dividend website is Dividata.com.  It's a fairly simple website, free to use, which provides tons of dividend-specific info, including the highest-yield stocks, the upcoming ex-div dates, and the highest-rated stocks based on their 3-metric rating system.  It's a great place to find new stocks to investigate, although you obviously don't want to stop there.  It also shows dividend payment histories and ""years paying,"" so you can quickly get an idea of which stocks are long-established and which may just be flashes in the pan. For example:  Lastly, I've got a couple of iOS apps that really help me with dividend investing: Compounder is a single-stock compound interest calculator, which automatically looks up a stock's info and calculates a simulated return for a given number of years, and Dividender allows you to input your entire portfolio and then calculates its growth over time as a whole.     The former is great for researching potential stocks, running scenarios, and deciding how much to invest, while the latter is great for tracking your portfolio and making plans regarding your investments overall." I have 8 years of 30%+ annual returns, I think i'll trust my judgment on this one. Bought amazon at 272, tesla at 130, etc. Snap is a weak investment long term. They will be one of the first companies (along with twitter) to really lose almost everything once the tides start to change. In day trading, you're trying to predict the immediate fluctuations of an essentially random system.  In long-term investing, you're trying to assess the strength of a company over a period of time. You also have frequent opportunities to assess your position and either add to it or get out. You can calculate the fully diluted shares by comparing EPS vs diluted (adjusted) EPS as reported in 10K. I don't believe they report the number directly, but it is a trivial math exercise to reach it. The do report outstanding common stock (basis for EPS).