When are stock trade fees deducted?
Typically the fees are charged when the order is executed.  The only catch I have ever ran into is when an order is partially executed. A good-till-cancel order that gets executed in several blocks over multiple days may get charged a separate commission for each day (but typically not each block).  If this is a simple brokerage account, you could avoid the whole question by using robinhood.com, which charges no commissions or maintenance fees. As others have said, it depends on the brokerage firm.  My broker is Scottrade. With Scottrade the commission is assessed and applied the moment the order is filled. If I buy 100 shares of XYZ at $10 a share then Scottrade will immediately deduct $1007.02 out of my account. They add the commission and fees to the buy transaction. On a sale transaction they subtract the commission and fees from the resulting money. So if I sell 100 shares of XYZ at $11 a share I will get 1,092.98 put into my account, which I can use three business days later.
I will expand this to 401K's, 403B's, and the federal retirement program.  There are 3 things to worry about when trading: The tax friendly retirement programs will remove the worry about taxes. Most will reduce or eliminate the concern about transaction fees. But some programs will limit the number of transactions per month. In the past few years the federal program has cracked down on people who were executing trades every day. While employees are able to execute trades without a fee, the costs related to each transaction were being absorbed into the cost of running the program. To keep the costs down they limited the number of transactions per month. Some private programs have limited the movement of money between some of the investment options. Unless your investments are held within a special tax-free account, then every sale transaction is a taxable event, meaning a gain or loss (capital gain/loss or income gain/loss, depending on various circumstances) is calculated at that moment in time. Gains may also accrue on unrealized amounts at year-end, for specific items [in general in the US, gains do not accrue at year-end for most things]. Moving cash that you have received from selling investments, from your brokerage account to your checking account, has no impact from a tax perspective. From 26 CFR 1.1012(c)(1)i): ... if a taxpayer sells or transfers shares of stock in a corporation that the taxpayer purchased or acquired on different dates or at different prices and the taxpayer does not adequately identify the lot from which the stock is sold or transferred, the stock sold or transferred is charged against the earliest lot the taxpayer purchased or acquired to determine the basis and holding period of the stock. From 26 CFR 1.1012(c)(3): (i) Where the stock is left in the custody of a broker or other agent, an adequate identification is made if—   (a) At the time of the sale or transfer, the taxpayer specifies to such broker or other agent having custody of the stock the particular stock to be sold or transferred, and ... So if you don't specify, the first share bought (for $100) is the one sold, and you have a capital gain of $800. But you can specify to the broker if you would rather sell the stock bought later (and thus have a lower gain). This can either be done for the individual sale (no later than the settlement date of the trade), or via standing order: 26 CFR 1.1012(c)(8) ... A standing order or instruction for the specific identification of stock is treated as an adequate identification made at the time of sale, transfer, delivery, or distribution. As mentioned by Dilip, you need to provide more details. In general for transacting on stocks; Long Term: If you hold the stock for more than one year then its long term and not taxable. There is a STT [Securities Transaction Tax] that is already deducted/paid during buying and selling of a stock. Short Term: If you hold the stock for less than one year, it's short term gain. This can be adjusted against the short term loss for the financial year. The tax rate is 10%. Day Trading: Is same as short term from tax point of view. Unless you are doing it as a full time business. If you have purchased multiple quantities of same stock in different quantities and time, then when you selling you have to arrive at profit or loss on FIFO basis, ie First in First Out I will add one point missing from the answers by CQM and THEAO. When you take a loan and invest the proceeds, the interest that you pay on the loan is deductible on Schedule A, Line 14 of your Federal income tax return under the category of Investment Interest Expense.  If the  interest expense is larger than all your investment earnings (not just those from the loan proceeds), then you can deduct at most the amount of the earnings, and carry over the excess investment interest paid this year for deduction  against investment earnings in future years. Also, if some of the earnings are long-term capital gains and you choose to deduct the corresponding investment interest expense, then those capital gains are taxed as ordinary income instead of at the favored LTCG rate. You also have the option of choosing to deduct only that amount of interest that offsets dividend (and short-term capital gain) income that is taxed at ordinary rates, pay tax at the LTCG rate on the capital gains, and carry over rest of the interest for deduction in future years. In previous years when the tax laws called for  reduction in the Schedule A deductions for high-income earners, this investment interest expense was exempt from the reduction. Whether future tax laws will allow this exemption depends on Congress. So, this should be taken into account when dealing with the taxes issue in deciding whether to take a loan to invest in the stock market. Two more esoteric differences, related to the same cause... When you have an outstanding debit balance in a margin the broker may lend out your securities to short sellers.  (They may well be able to lend them out even if there's no debit balance -- check your account agreement and relevant regulations).   You'll never know this (there's no indication in your account of it) unless you ask, and maybe not even then. If the securities pay out dividends while lent out, you don't get the dividends (directly).  The dividends go to the person who bought them from the short-seller.  The short-seller has to pay the dividend amount to his broker who pays them to your broker who pays them to you.  If the dividends that were paid out by the security were qualified dividends (15% max rate) the qualified-ness goes to the person who bought the security from the short-seller.  What you received weren't dividends at all, but a payment-in-lieu of dividends and qualified dividend treatment isn't available for them.   Some (many?  all?) brokers will pay you a gross-up payment to compensate you for the extra tax you had to pay due to your qualified dividends on that security not actually being qualified. A similar thing happens if there's a shareholder vote.  If the stock was lent out on the record date to establish voting eligibility, the person eligible to vote is the person who bought them from the short-seller, not you.  So if for some reason you really want/need to vote in a shareholder vote, call your broker and ask them to journal the shares in question over to the cash side of your account before the record date for determining voting eligibility. "Because it takes 3 business days for the actual transfer of stock to occur after you buy or sell to the next owner, your cash is tied up until that happens. This is called the settlement period. Therefore, brokers offer ""margin"", which is a form of credit, or loan, to allow you to keep trading while the settlement period occurs, and in other situations unrelated to the presented question. To do this you need a ""margin account"", you currently have a ""cash account"". The caveat of having a retail margin account (distinct from a professional margin account) is that there is a limited amount of same-day trades you can make if you have less than $25,000 in the account. This is called the Pattern Day Trader (PDT) rule. You don't need $25k to day trade, you will just wish you had it, as it is easy to get your account frozen or downgraded to a cash account. The way around THAT is to have multiple margin accounts at different brokerages. This will greatly increase the number of same day trades you can make. Many brokers that offer a ""solution"" to PDT to people that don't have 25k to invest, are offering professional trading accounts, which have additional fees for data, which is free for retail trading accounts. This problem has nothing to do with:  So be careful of the advice you get on the internet. It is mostly white noise. Feel free to verify" If you are trading CFDs, which are usually traded on margin, you will usually be charged an overnight financing fee for long positions held overnight and you will receive an overnight financing credit for short positions held overnight. Most CFD brokers will have their overnight financing rates set at + or - 2.5% or 3% from the country's official interest rates. So if your country's official interest rate is 5% and your broker uses + or - 2.5%, you will get a 2.5% credit for any short positions held overnight and pay 7.5% fee for any long positions held overnight. In Australia the official interest rate is 2.5%, so I get 0% for short positions and pay 5% for long positions held overnight. If you are looking to hold positions open long term (especially long positions) you might think twice before using CFDs to trade as you may end up paying quite a bit in interest over a long period of time. These financing fees are charged because you are borrowing the funds to open your positions, If you buy shares directly you would not be charged such overnight financing fees. There are lots of provisos, but in general you are correct. The provisos, off the top of my head: The only fees will be any brokerage fees when you purchase the stock. I haven't seen any handling fees when you get the dividend, but it may depend on how you hold the stock. There is a misunderstanding somewhere that your question didn't illuminate. You should have lost $0.04 as you say. Assuming the prices are correct the missing $0.02 aren't covered by a reasonable interpretations of the Robinhood fees schedule. For US-listed stocks: $0 plus SEC fees: 0.00221% of principal ($22.10 per $1,000,000 of principal) plus Trading Activity Fee: $0.000119/share rounded to nearest penny plus short/long term capital gains taxes The total fee rate is 0.002329% or 0.00002329*the price of the trade. With you trades totaling around $11, the fee would be ~0.000256 or ~1/40 of a penny.  The answer is probably that they charge $0.01 for any fraction of a penny. It's difficult to explain as anything other than avarice, so I won't try. "Generally if you are using FIFO (first in, first out) accounting, you will need to match the transactions based on the number of shares. In your example, at the beginning of day 6, you had two lots of shares, 100 @ 50 and 10 @ 52.  On that day you sold 50 shares, and using FIFO, you sold 50 shares of the first lot.  This leaves you with 50 @ 50 and 10 @ 52, and a taxable capital gain on the 50 shares you sold. Note that commissions incurred buying the shares increase your basis, and commissions incurred selling the shares decrease your proceeds.  So if you spent $10 per trade, your basis on the 100 @ 50 lot was $5010, and the proceeds on your 50 @ 60 sale were $2990.  In this example you sold half of the lot, so your basis for the sale was half of $5010 or $2505, so your capital gain is $2990 - 2505 = $485. The sales you describe are also ""wash sales"", in that you sold stock and bought back an equivalent stock within 30 days.  Generally this is only relevant if one of the sales was at a loss but you will need to account for this in your code.  You can look up the definition of wash sale, it starts to get complex. If you are writing code to handle this in any generic situation you will also have to handle stock splits, spin-offs, mergers, etc. which change the number of shares you own and their cost basis.  I have implemented this myself and I have written about 25-30 custom routines, one for each kind of transaction that I've encountered.  The structure of these deals is limited only by the imagination of investment bankers so I think it is impossible to write a single generic algorithm that handles them all, instead I have a framework that I update each quarter as new transactions occur." "Firstly, if a stock costs $50 this second, the bid/ask would have to be 49/50.  If the bid/ask were 49/51, the stock would cost $51 this second.  What you're likely referring to is the last trade, not the cost.  The last trading price is history and doesn't apply to future transactions. To make it simple, let's define a simple order book.  Say there is a bid to buy 100 at $49, 200 at $48, 500 at $47.  If you place a market order to sell 100 shares, it should all get filled at $49.  If you had placed a market order to sell 200 shares instead, half should get filled at $49 and half at $48.  This is, of course, assuming no one else places an order before you get yours submitted.  If someone beats you to the 100 share lot, then your order could get filled at lower than what you thought you'd get.  If your internet connection is slow or there is a lot of latency in the data from the exchange, then things like this could happen.  Also, there are many ECNs in addition to the exchanges which may have different order books.  There are also trades which, for some reason, get delayed and show up later in the ""time and sales"" window. But to answer the question of why someone would want to sell low... the only reason I could think is they desire to drive the price down." Now a days, your stocks can be seen virtually through a brokerage account. Back in the days, a stock certificate was the only way to authenticate stock ownership. You can still request them though from the corporation you have shares in or your brokerage. It will have your name, corporation name and number of shares you have. You have to buy shares of a stock either through a brokerage or the corporation itself. Most stock brokerages are legit and are FDIC or SIPC insured. But your risks are your own loses. The $10 you are referring to is the trade commission fee the brokerage charges. When you place an order to buy or sell a stock the brokerage will charge you $10. So for example if you bought 1 share of a $20 stock. The total transaction cost will be $30. Depending on the state you live in, you can basically starting trading stocks at either 18 or 21. You can donate/gift your shares to virtually anyone. When you sell a stock and experience a profit, you will be charged a capital gains tax. If you buy a stock and sell it for a gain within 1 year, you will taxed up to 35% or your tax bracket but if you hold it for more than a year, you will taxed only 15% or your tax bracket. The commission is per trade, there is likely a different commission based on the type of security you're trading, stock, options, bonds, over the internet, on the phone, etc.  It's not likely that they charge an account maintenance fee, but without knowing what kind of account you have it's hard to say. What you may be referring to is a fund expense ratio.  Most (all...) mutual funds and exchange traded funds will charge some sort of expense costs to you, this is usually expressed as a percent of your holdings.  An index fund like Vanguard's S&P 500 index, ticker VOO, has a small 0.05% expense ratio. Most brokers will have a set of funds that you can trade with no commission, though there will still be an expense fee charged by the fund. Read over the E*Trade fee schedule carefully. "You're right.  I did include ""is it reasonable"" in the title.  Therefore that brings in the acceptability of those taxes.  However I am making the case that I would like capital gains to be taxed most similarly to regular income (or at least in a parallel bracket), which is independent of the amount needed to be brought in.  I think parallel brackets would be the most productive since it would encourage people to both produce and invest, because you would get the lowest taxes by maximizing both."