You just opened an invesment accout with your favorite “commission free” broker, put some serious money into it, and now you don’t know what to do next.
Which stock should I buy? And how do you place an order to buy your first stock? and what are all those order options? this is all very confusing.
If this is you, keep reading.
#1 Find the ticker for your stocks
Prepare your list of stocks to buy.
In that list, you will need to have each ticker, or stock symbol for your stock order.
The stock symbol is an universal code to locate your stocks, usually a series of letter like XYZ. For example for Microsoft, the stock symbol is MSFT.
It’s like an ID card for your stocks, without it, you can’t buy or sell stocks.
Your broker will have a way to convert the company name into stock symbols.
If you are buying the stocks in your WealthVenue 1-2-3 portfolio, the ticker or symbol for each stock will be display in the top left corner.
#2 Choose your action for the Stock Order
It will be a BUY if you want to invest into that stock, or SELL if you already own that stock and want to exit your investment with any profits you have made.
#3 Choose your Order Type
It’s often preferable to select ‘LMT’ aka Limit Order, and not ‘MKT’ aka Market Order.
LMT orders will give you full control of your investment cost while MKT orders are always more expensive.
See why in the next section.
#4 Choose your Price
How much money do you want to invest in that stock?
It’s pretty simple actually, like buying fruits at the supermarket.
Each stock sells for a price per share or per unit, therefore you will need to enter a price and a quantity of shares.
Your broker might offer the option to put a total amount and do the conversion to price and quantity instead.
But if you have a Market Order aka MKT, that price and quantity will be determined automatically by your broker.
And that means your investment cost might be higher than expected.
And higher investment costs mean that any future gains you might have will be impacted negatively.
#5 Choose the Duration/Time Limit for your Stock Order
All stock orders have a time limit.
And it’s something you can control.
By default, it’s GFD (Good-For-Day), that is the order will expire at the end of the day.
This is what you want most of the time.