Baron Phillipe Rothschild once said that the time to buy was “when there is blood in the streets.”

Well, then it is time to buy.

Jim was asking about investing in small quantities of stock.

DRIPS, or direct reinvestment plans, are plans run by companies that allow their stockholders to invest in stock directly without having to have a brokerage account or pay fees. You don’t have to buy a position or a round lot. Some of these let you buy fractional shares, so you can add $10 to your drip at any time. Every DRIP has a different set of rules. Some of them require that you already own at least one share of stock.

Not all companies offer DRIPs, but there are thousands of them that do, and many of the large cap stocks can be purchased through a DRIP.

You can’t time things as well and it seems impossible to buy in the dip or sell at a peak, but that is made up for by not having to pay any brokerage fees.

The link to DirectInvesting.com is a good one. They don’t sell or even recommend stocks. They just maintain a list of the companies that offer DRIPs with good instructions on how to get into the plans.

Now that Bush has officially pushed the US economy into a toilet, there will be good chances to buy stock in the next year or so. Keep a tabs on the stocks you like and remember to buy when you are at least knee deep in blood.