how to buy your first share if you want to invest in the
stock market it's essential to know how to buy stocks and that's what we're
going to explain to you today stick with us
and you'll know how easy it is to buy
shares in a company with a step-by-step example let's start by going through
the basics of how stock trading works one essential thing you should know are
that stocks shares and equities mean pretty much the same thing shares of
public companies are traded on a stock exchange some of the most popular stock
exchanges are the New York Stock Exchange NYSC Nasdaq and the London Stock
Exchange LSE a Stock Exchange is a type of public marketplace for shares and as
with any marketplace, there are buyers and sellers when a buyer and a seller
agree on a price a deal is done here's a high-level view of how it works when
someone wants to sell a share they submit the price of which they are willing
to sell it on the exchange buyers do the same
they submit the price at which they want to buy a particular
stock when the lowest selling price meets the highest buying price a deal is
done this process is fully automated and could happen thousands of times per
second for popular stocks as there are many investors who trade them the quotes
that you see for a certain stock are the prices available for an immediate deal
in order to access a stock exchange, you need a stock broker who executes steals
for you on your behalf Trading to 1to which pioneered Xero Commission investing
in the UK in Europe makes the whole process as easy as shopping for groceries
online gone are the days when you had to visit a branch fill in endless
paperwork and deal with hard to use trading platforms straight from the 90s so
let's say you want to buy shares from one of the two
thousand-plus companies available on trading to one to first get the app from
the App Store and open a free practice investment account this shouldn't take more
than two minutes in the app at the very top, you'll see your available balance
this is your money available to invest directly below you'll find lists of
shares which you can customize if you're looking for a specific stock you can
Search for it let's find National Grid click on the magnifying glass type in
National Grid and there it is the live price for National Grid in our example
right now is eight hundred and eighty-nine point four P it's moving up and down
all the time as new trades go through on the London Stock Exchange
the main things to consider when you're buying shares are
which company what price and how many shares you want to buy we've already
decided to buy National Grid and we can see the current price now we need to
decide how many shares we want to buy this depends on how much money we want to
invest if we want to invest a hundred and fifty pounds and the price of the
stock is 10 pounds we'll have to buy 15 shares that's 150 pounds divided by 10
pounds deciding how much to invest in one particular stock depends on your
strategy and your risk appetite as a rule of thumb is better not to invest all
your money in one stock or not put all your eggs in one basket so to speak but
we'll write about investing strategies portfolio management and risk in other articles
so we decided to invest around 150 pounds
which in the case of National Grid is 15 shares let's click
buy set the number of shares to 15 and then tap on review order here we can
make a final check on our order before sending it for execution if it's okay
tap on send by order we get a confirmation saying order executed you bought 15
shares of National Grid at a price of 889 points 4 P and that's it the shares
and now yours and you own a piece of the company you can see the exact cost
which is 15 shares multiplied by 8 point 8 9 4 pounds and that equals a hundred
and thirty-three point 4 1 pounds and here's the amazing part when you invest
with trading - 1 - there's no commission or fees whatsoever while other brokers
would charge a commission of up to of pounds per trade if you want to see
what's going on with the investments you can go to the portfolio tab where you
will find its total value and all the stocks that you own there's also an
overview of the proportion of each stock from your portfolio tapping it will
display the values in percentage we suggest you play with your free practice
account until you feel comfortable enough to invest real.