How exactly do you buy a stock? I'm not necessarily saying that im going to buy it, but damn, it's $0.17. That's LESS THAN A DOLLAR.
To simplify it:
You have an account with a stock broker (e.g. E*Trade) that holds money and stocks. If you opened a new one, it would only hold money, kind of like a bank account. Then, using your broker's interface (some use phone calls, most have online interfaces) you request a certain amount of shares of a desired stock (e.g. 1 share of RSHCQ). The broker charges a service fee for buying the stock (e.g. E*Trade has a $9.99 fee per trade) and purchases the stock at the current lowest price they can get it at. That value is subtracted from your monetary account and your portfolio gains stock shares.
Then when you want to sell it, you once again pay the trading fee (e.g. E*Trade has a $9.99 fee per trade) and the stock is sold at its current market price. The money earned from that sale goes directly back into your broker wallet.
What this means for you: to buy 1 share of Radioshack via the example E*Trade, it would cost $10.18 right now. Then if you sold it immediately, you'd pay the $9.99 trade fee but make back $0.19. So, buying and selling 1 share of Radioshack right now would make you lose $19.98. To break even, the stock price of the single share would have to go up by $19.98, which is a 105,158% increase in value. If you bought a hundred shares for a total of $19, to break even the stock price would have to go up 105%; a little more than double its current value at 39 cents. If you bought a thousand for $190, the stock price would only have to go up 10% to about 0.21 to break even.
