is there a broker where it's affordable to trade a small number of shares?

Ignore Scottrade and their $7 per trade. I like them but not if i want to trade small shares.

If you want to trade like 20 shares at a time is there a place where this is realistic?

 

Interactive brokers

 

Look at Robinhood.

 

Interactive Brokers has low fees, but I believe they require a minimum of $10,000 in the account. I also believe they have a monthly minimum fee if you don't do any trading.

For smaller accounts, check out StockPile.com; they even allow buying fractional shares.

 

@DaveV, how do fractional shares work as there's no legal way to purchase a fraction?

 

I appreciate that you don't mean 20 shares in Berkshire Hathaway, but I suspect that the criteria on which this will depend must be more account-size and transaction-size, rather than numbers of shares?

 

Robinhood .. and its free too. Granted you will suffer slippage of few cents but if you are trading 100s at a time, loss of dollar is not your concern.

 

StockPile.com allows you to buy a specific dollar amount of stock, instead of specifying the number of shares. I assume that they buy full shares, and aggregate the fractions internally. I have recommended it to a couple friends who wanted to invest in the market with small amounts, and they are happy with the service.

 

You can specify amounts in IB but no fractional shares.

 

I never knew that. I wonder if this applies to both TWS and the Gateway (which I mostly use).