How To Own Stocks
What is a stock?
How to start investing?
Top 4 recommended stockbroker
What is a stock?
A Stock, which can also go by "Equity", is a security that represents the ownership of a fraction of a corporation or a startup business. This entitles the stock owner to a proportion of the corporation's assets and profits equal to how much stock they own. Units of stock are called “shares”.
How to start investing?
To start investing in stocks, you'll first need to decide how you want to invest your money in the stock market.
You will need to determine your investing approach. Some people will invest in individual stocks, while some others will take a less active approach.
There are different ways to buy into the stock market.
You can buy individual stocks after doing a bit of research prior to investing in the company and taking a bit of time to learn about the company day-today activities.
You can buy in index funds. It tracks a stock index like S&P 500. If things like quarterly earnings reports and average mathematical calculations don't sound like fun, there is nothing wrong with taking the passive approach.
As s 3rd option, you can also invest in mutual funds. A mutual fund splits your money between different investors in a group of investments like stocks and bonds.
4th option is Bonds. Bonds are fixed instruments that represent a loan made by the investor to the borrower. Look at it as an IOU between the borrower and the lender, which will include in detail the loan and the payments.
Online Broker, Discount Broker & Robo-Advisor?
There are many ways to get into the stock market, but the real question is, how to get in? Do you go through a bank or a website online? Let's compare them all.
1
Online Broker
A Broker is either a full-service or discount kind of broker. A Full-Service broker will give the full range of traditional brokerage services along with financial advice for retirement, healthcare, and everything else related to money. They usually with high net-worth clients. They charge a large fee, including a percent of your transactions, a percent of your assets that they manage, and maybe a yearly membership fee.
Minimum account Size: $25,000.
2
Discount Broker
A Discount Broker will give you the tools to select and place your own transactions. As the space of financial service has evolved. Discount online brokers offer more features, including educational materials on their platform. They offer a set-it-and-forget-it Robo-advisory service as well.
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Minimum account size: 0 or very low.
3
Robo-Advisor
The Robo-Advisor is a stockbroker you never see, never communicate with. That's because it's all done automatically. The Robo-Advisor will invest your money on your behalf in the appropriate portfolio for your age, risk tolerance, and investing goals. Not only can it select your investments, but it will also optimize your tax efficiency and make changes accordingly overtime automatically. An option that has dramatically exploded in the recent years is a Robo-advisor.
All this to say, there is no specific way to get into the stock market. You choose the best option that reflects you. Are you willing to risk it, or do you prefer to be cautious?
Top 4 recommended stockbrokers
Based on public reviews and industry rankings,
Here are four of the top recommended stockbrokers in Canada:
It will consist of online brokers (Real humans) and Robo-Advisors (AI's).
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