Login to your online stock brokerage account to
start placing your trade. Let's say you're an ABC buyer, so you'll be
purchasing at the ask price of $84.79. Now what?
Start by
choosing Buy and entering your ticker symbol (or looking it up, then entering
it): ABC. Enter the number of shares you want to buy, too.
You have a
few more choices to make as you tee up the trade ticket. First, are you
entering a market or limit order? A market order says you want to buy ABC at
the best available stock market price, whatever it is. This is usually the
fastest way to place your stock trade. If you're stock investing for the longer
term and not too concerned with market timing, that might be fine for your
needs.
Of course,
if you were trading a fast-moving penny stock, or if there's suddenly a big run
in IBM shares, that could get expensive. To lock in your stock price, you may
prefer entering a limit order (a limit order may not guarantee an execution).
For a limit order, you specify the price at which you want to buy ABC; if your
discount broker can get you a better price on this buy, you'll be fine with
that, too.
You can even
get really fancy and opt for a stop order. A stop order tells the market: if
ABC trades at or through a certain price, trigger my order to go. You can enter
a plain-Jane stop order, that "triggers" a market price after your
stop is reached, or you can enter a stop limit order. In that case, the order
gets activated when your stop is reached, then gets entered automatically as a
limit order.
You can also
specify the duration of your order: a day order expires at the end of the
current trading day, while a GTC is Good 'til Canceled.
If you
really want to get specific, you can qualify your order, too: AON stands for all
or None, meaning you want your full share quantity filled or no shares at all.
Make your
choices, and then click to submit your order and start investing. That's it!
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