Download the Foolish Buy Calculator™

The Foolish Buy Calculator™ spreadsheet determines the number of shares to buy when purchasing stocks in "equal dollar amounts," a technique employed in almost every Motley Fool® investment model. Basically, you decide on an initial total investment amount (say $10,000) then divide that amount by the number of stocks in your chosen model (e.g. four stocks for the Foolish Four model). The resulting number ($2500 in our example) is the dollar amount of each stock to buy.
The number of shares of each stock that you buy is determined by dividing this per stock dollar amount by the share price of each stock (for example, $2,500 of a stock selling at $38/share would mean 65.78947368 shares, or 65 shares since you can't buy fractional shares). In our example, you would be buying $2470 worth of the stock (65 shares x $38/share). You can never buy exactly equal dollar amounts of stocks that are not trading at exactly the same price at the time you place the orders.
When working with model portfolios the calculations are straightforward. However, if you plan to make actual purchases with real cash money you will find that things are not so simple. You have to factor in trading commissions, eliminate fractional shares, allow for the possibility that the price will change between the time you calculate how many shares to buy and the time your trade is actually executed, deal with the fact that you can't place all your trades simultaneously, make sure you wind up with the smallest possible amount of leftover cash, etc. The process as carried out in the real world is confusing and time consuming, and can cost you unnecessary heartache and money.
That's where the Foolish Buy Calculator™ comes in. You supply the commission fee, initial total investment amount, up to 30 stocks you want to buy, and their most current prices, and it manages the entire process for you, dealing with all the variable factors.
To ensure that your real-life purchases go as smoothly as possible, be sure to read everything before doing anything and practice a few times before you use actual cash money. You can practice via live trading of virtual dollars at the Virtual Stock Exchange™; registration is free.

The Foolish Buy Calculator™ is shareware. If you use it more than five times, you must send US $5.00 to the author. It's easy to pay via the PayPal service using the link below. You can even get a $5.00 signup bonus if you're a new PayPal user, effectively making your FBC purchase free!

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Download the Foolish Buy Calculator™

Copyright © by Michael Pizolato.

The Foolish Buy Calculator and the FBC web site were created by
Michael Pizolato (pictured below).