New Pre-Facebook Buy
by Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe | January 30, 2012 9:07 am
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Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/2012/01/new-pre-facebook-buy/
Travis, I’ve been trying to jump on Mail.ru for days, but Schwab won’t recognize MLRUY as a valid symbol. Interestingly, Yahoo Finance has no trouble with it. How did you buy it, if I may ask?
I just went to Schwab and it came up with a last price of $32.50
MLRUY does not trade often, that last price was January 30 on the pinks. I opened my position in London that same day for $32.17, the close today in London was $34.28.
Hi Alan — I bought in London directly using Interactive Brokers. I would presume that pretty much any broker could buy it in London for you, but many of them make you call and/or charge an arm and a leg for the service. And in my experience, some brokers actively discourage folks from buys like these (which may well be the right call much of the time). Good luck to you.
They won’t let me do this on my Schwab account. How do I buy it?
Etrade canceled my order. There is no ask price and no volume for mlruy.
It looks like etrade will let me buy it.
Travis-Just went to your portfolio page but this stock is not being shown?
Oops, forgot to add it last week — it’s there now. Sorry.
Sorry if I got anyone excited about a stock that’s hard to buy — that’s why I chose not to feature Mail.ru as the “idea of the month” in January. I think it’s worth having an account with a broker like Interactive Brokers so you can trade directly on some foreign exchanges, but I know other brokers offer similar capabilities too for some customers. Etrade made a big showing with their direct online trading for foreign exchanges a few years ago, and any big broker should be able to do broker-assisted trades for you on major overseas markets, but do be careful — sometimes the fees and commissions can be huge, make sure to ask. The pink sheets listings generally will trade for these kinds of stocks if you’ll pay up for a bit of a premium over the live price when the home market is open (ie, morning in NY, when London is still open), but it can also be tough to sell these kinds of foreign pink sheets stocks in a hurry if you ever need to. I have several accounts with big brokers like Ameritrade, Fidelity, etc for various reasons, and am perfectly willing to hold pink sheets stocks in those accounts if I can get decent buy prices, but I keep open an Interactive Brokers account just so I can easily and cheaply trade foreign exchanges when I want to.