re: Those with individual stocks - some general questions for you....

I have one stock trading account with Fidelity. All of my stock transactions are inside this one account. Each stock you own in the account shows up as a line item. If you buy shares of a stock at different times it will show you how much you've made or lost on the individual lots and whether they are short or long term. If you sell a stock they will hold the cash in a money market account inside the trading account until you tell them to do something different with it. If a stock pays dividends then the dividends also go into the money market account. At the end of the year they send me all of the forms needed for tax prep. I just print a copy and give it to my tax preparer. Long term capital gains are not a hit. Unless you are in a low marginal tax bracket long term capital gains are at a lower rate than your marginal tax rate. This is a good thing.