I guess this is a question for those of you that spent the last 10 years on Ameritrade trying to make a hobby out of the stock market...of course I wouldn't mind hearing a professional's take on my issue. I received 12 shares of Lucent Technologies stock back in 2000. It was a graduation present that went horribly wrong. Apparently my grandparents put 1000 bucks into them and then the tech bubble burst or maybe it didn't and I'm just really unlucky.