How to Buy Shares – Step by Step Instructions

1. Choose Buy or Sell
The first step is always to choose what we would like to do, buy shares long or sell shares short. As a new investor, keep it simple, buy shares long!

2. Insert Quantity
Next we enter how many shares we would like to buy or sell in total. To calculate how many shares we can afford, simply take the total amount of cash currently in the account and divide it buy the stock’s last price. So, if stock XYZ is trading at $10 and we have $1000 in our account, we can afford to purchase 100 shares of stock ($1000 / $10).

3. Insert Symbol
The ticker symbol represents the company we are going to trade. For example, Disney has a ticker symbol of “DIS”, Apple is “AAPL”, and Facebook is “FB”. If we are not sure of the company’s symbol, you can click on the Symbol field and search to find it. Tickers are also required to read a stock chart.

4. Choose Order Type
The most common order types: market, limit, and stop (see my guide, Best Order Types for Stock Trading). Market orders buy or sell immediately at the current best market price. Limit orders only buy or sell these shares at, “$xx price or better”. Lastly, stop loss orders are combined with a market or limit to trigger once $xx price hits. For new investors just getting started, I always suggest just sticking with market orders.

5. Review Order and Place Trade
After the basic inputs have been made, the “Place Trade” button will appear to complete the order. By default, a summary screen always appears once this button is clicked to summarize the order and confirm we have enough funds in our account. Once investors have experience and are comfortable with the trade ticket, this confirmation page can be disabled.

Other fields (Expiration, Special Instructions, Routing)
New investors should ignore these fields and leave them set to their default values. These options give investors more control as to how long certain orders should remain active and how they should be filled. For example, “GTC” for expiration means “good-till-cancelled”.

Regarding routing, 99.9% of orders are routed using the online broker’s automated system. However, day traders will sometimes hand select (direct route) their orders to a specific market center to receive market rebates. See this StockBrokers.com guide for more on order routing.