Hi, David.

DY> I am interested in buying a small number of shares.  Can anyone tell me wha
DY> is the smallest amount in $ or in quanitity that one can buy.

You can buy one share in any company, if you want. There are 2 problems,
though; the first is the "marketable parcel", and the corresponding
concept of the "odd lot" (not a marketable parcel). All odd lots are
automatically bought at a higher price than the current market price,
and sold at a lower price. How much higher/lower, and the size of the
marketable parcel, varies with the price of the share. For example,
yesterday I sold 3084 Pacific BBA for a client, 3000 at $2.78 and the 84
were automatically traded at $2.68. ie, at that price a marketable
parcel is 100 shares, and the odd lot discount is 10 cents.

The other problem is the minimum brokerage charge which all brokers
have. For example, our standard rate up to $5,000 worth of shares is
2.5%, but the minimum is $95 to buy, $75 to sell. (Others are
cheaper, see below.) Let's say you buy 100 shares at $10. You're
effectively paying 9.5% brokerage, which means that your shares have to
increase by at least that %age before you are making a profit, plus the
cost of selling.

DY> Can someone also recommend a cheap broker?

There are several so-called "discount" brokers, Pont Securities and
Rivkin Croll Smith are two which you might want to try. I don't know
their charges. We are a "full-service" broker, which means the
availability of research material and recommendations, you can discuss
your trading with your advisor and you may well end up saving more by
being able to trade at a better price to offset the brokerage.

With a discount broker you can usually only say "buy (or sell) nnnn
shares of XYZ company at $n.nn (or at current market price)". If those
shares were available at say 1 or 2 cents more (if you specified a
price) you'd miss out and kick yourself when they doubled in price. :-)
If you bought at the current market price in the morning and the shares
dropped during the day, you'd also kick yourself. With a full service
broker, your advisor should have a 'feel' for the market and be able to
suggest buying at a lower price. Of course we don't always get it right
either :-) but are perhaps more likely to by being able to see all the
outstanding orders at a range of prices in that company.

DY> PS : Is there any service where one can purchase shares "on-line"

Well I can :-) in the sense that I'm "on-line" to the ASX's SEAT trading
system. Not for the general public although it has certainly been mooted
for the Internet (see an article in the July Scientific American for
example) and may already be in place.

Regards, FIM.

 * * Other times, other customs.
@EOT:

---