Well ...
http://www.ringzerotrades.com/results.html looks plenty pricey to me, even though the BETA stage contains free advice.
I see that they propose buys in terms of percentages of your allotted cash for stock purchases, so I thought I would check out thier example for Friday, July 6 (MiSP), which purports a 20% share for each of the following symbols:
EWY - $65.20 per share, FXI - $136.85, EWT - $16.73, EWZ - $64.91, and EEM - $138.30
Assuming you invested an equal 20% risk in each of the named securities, the minimum cost to procure these stocks breaks down as follows (using one share at 138.30 as the FIRST 20% value, rest of them are rounded to nearest half-cent):
EEM ... 1 share ... , FXI ... 1.01 shares ...., EWY ... 2.12 shares ...., EWZ ... 2.13 shares ..., EWT ... 8.27 shares
Thus, for a total cost of $691.50, you get an astounding 14 shares of stock; that is, if you cannot buy partial stocks, in which case the total zooms to a mind-boggling 14.53 shares.
While I am no whizcake at mathematics, even I can see that this purchase would have to be first doubled, then increased additionally by a factor of at least 5 to end up with 64 (or more) shares of each.
So, for a lot of 64 EEM and the 20% valuation for each of the others, this works out to approximately (using the EEM * 64 = $8851.20 as a base):
EEM .. 64 .. $8851.20 ..... FXI = 65 ...... EWY = 136 ...... EWZ = 136 ...... EWT = 529 (shares), for a total investment of $44,256 !!
Checking the rate of return at 2% annualized over 1 MONTH on a compound interest calculator found at http://math.about.com/library/blcompoundinterest.htm , the effective yield is a mediocre $70.17 on the investment. It becomes only $104.78 if averaging a 3% return.
Of note is that each and every one of these stocks is listed on the (emerging) iShares index, which prompts me to consider that the entire site may be nothing more than a brokerage for iShares. But then, if they can indeed get us to buy stocks on that exchange once they are up and running, then perhaps even a consistent 1% is better than what most of us achieve without the aid of professional guidance.
Good luck to all, and please check my math !!