How to Buy and Sell Shares on the Internet

Buying or Selling Shares – Top Tips

Use an online stockbroker who has research tools so you can learn all about your proposed investment. One such broker is Hargreaves Lansdown who offer a range of research tools designed to help you make the most of your shares visit Hargreaves Lansdown.
Ask yourself- are there any Stock Broker views? buy? sell? hold?
Make sure you've researched the company. Visit the company web site.
Find out if the shares come with a dividend. If yes, what is the current share price yield i.e. the effective rate of interest you will be paid for owning the shares.
Decide before hand what price you are happy to buy at, what price are you happy to sell at and what would be a good profit.
Consider setting a Stop Loss. If your share price falls 30% from your purchase price, your decision to buy may not have been a good one.
Never invest more than you can afford to lose in shares.
Decide if you want to buy a number of shares or invest an amount. There are dealing costs and stamp duty to consider.
Open your first dealing account with Hargreaves Lansdown and you can start dealing shares online at just £11.95 per deal and as low as £5.95 per deal if you are an active trader. Visit Hargreaves Lansdown.
Find a Stock Broker online that has been around for years. One such broker is Alliance Trust, who offer Low Cost Share Dealing Accounts. You will be able to buy and sell shares safely. They also offer access to a range of share based investments too.
A name you will have heard of is J.P. Morgan, what people don’t know is they allow you to trade online for only £10 a trade. You can trade using their Investment Account or one of their tax-efficient wrappers. Visit JP Morgan Now for more details on share dealing, tax efficient options, FTSE equities and more.
Buying shares is expensive and risky, stamp duty is 0.5% of any buy trade and with dealing costs on top investing small amounts may not be worth it. If you are not prepared to potentially lose a large percentage of your investment you may want to consider a Cash ISA as a safe home for your money. See Latest Cash ISA Rates here .

About buying shares online - what are your options.

Shares can be bought and sold by post, telephone or online. Most people, however, now trade shares on the internet because it is the cheapest way of dealing. It is also quick and convenient.

Internet share dealing is ‘execution only’, which means that the broker carries out your instructions on what to buy and sell. No advice is given. When you buy shares, you pay 0.5pc stamp duty on top of the cost of dealing.

Some internet share dealing services buy and sell shares in real time so you know exactly the price you are paying for your chosen shares. However, not all services do this. Some bundle up deals throughout the day and only buy at certain times - usually at the end of the day - to keep costs down. With this, the danger is you may not buy or sell the shares at the price you thought.

It is likely your shares will be held in a ‘nominee account’ - basically the stockbroker holds them on your behalf, so your name doesn't appear on the company's register. This means you may not receive the company's report and accounts or any perks which holding the shares may attract. Dividends will be paid into your account.

As you don't hold the share certificates, you have to sell the shares through the broker you bought them from. Most brokers charge you a fee per stock if you swap to another firm.

Always compare prices across the board. Ask how much it is for a basic trade, for a frequent-trader service (if you expect to trade every day) and for other extras, such as the cost of a tax-free self-select ISA wrapper (where you choose the shares which sit in an Individual Savings Account). Basic trading begins at less than £10 per trade, although investors should be wary of offers that are suspiciously low - the price may rise in the future or the costs may be hidden elsewhere.

The first thing you need to get before you can buy or sell any shares is you need a Stockbroker.

Low Cost Share Dealing Accounts

1. Hargreaves Lansdown Vantage Fund & Share Account

Deal shares online from £11.95 per deal or as low as £5.95 per deal if you deal regularly
No charge to hold shares in the Vantage Fund & Share Account
Deal UK, US and European Shares plus Funds, Investment Trusts, Bonds and Gilts
Free share tips and research from Investors Chronicle and Shares magazine
Use stop loss and limit orders to manage your deals
Get a FREE 20 page guide from Hargreaves Lansdown on "How to Select Shares" - download it today to your PC or tablet.

2. Alliance Trust Savings Investment Dealing Account

With Alliance Trust you can:

Open and trade online or by phone today
Choose from over 4,000 investments on their invest platform
Low quarterly administration charge of £10+VAT
Trade from only £6.25 per deal
100% of all fund manager commissions rebated back to customers

Full details on Low Cost Share Dealing Accounts

Buying Shares

What Online Stock brokers offer

J.P. Morgan are a well respected multinational business who offer an online and offline share and investment service. You can set prices to automatically buy or sell shares at so for busy people who haven’t got the time to keep a daily eye on the markets or individual shares J.P. Morgan is a good choice.

J.P. Morgan lets you trade in UK equities, bonds and gilts, investment trusts, unit trusts & OEICs and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) as well as international equities on international exchanges.

J.P. Morgan offers investor information like the professionals use and you don’t need to trade on a regular basis to get the £10.00 a trade. Open a J.P. Morgan account today.

The Share Centre (http://www.share.co.uk) is one of the cheapest players around for both one-off share buying and regular trading. It has a basic share-dealing service that charges 1% of the value of the shares you're buying or selling. There is a minimum charge of £2.50 for buying and £7.50 for selling.

You pay a £2.50 fee every quarter plus VAT on stock held in your account. Shares are bought and sold on a batch basis three times a day, so you won't know what price you're getting. The service is available online, by phone, post or fax.

For regular traders buying shares or selling shares, the Share Centre's Fastrack service costs £7.50 per trade in real time. You pay £80 plus VAT a year for administration charges on stocks.

The Norwich & Peterborough building society runs BrokerlineDirect.com which costs £11.95 per trade in addition to an annual fee of £10 and a one-off £10 signing-up fee. Shares are bought in real time.

Stockbroker Hargreaves Lansdown has a choice of services, including online-only, which has a flat rate of £11.95 per trade plus this drops to £5.95 per trade for frequent traders. Shares are bought in real time, you see the price before you deal.

Do Research, before You Buy Shares

Every investor should want to know as much about a company that they can before you invest your hard earned cash.

There are various share magazines, like Investors Chronicle or Moneyweek or there are free share tips that you can ask for online and straight into your inbox via email; Or you can read daily newspapers they all have a financial section and from time to time offer tips on shares to buy and sell. Do as much research as possible.

Hargreaves Lansdown can help with your research it has tools and information including weekly share tips from Investors Chronicle and sector reports from shares magazine. This is all provided free to help you make your own investment decisions.

When to buy shares

Market timing is everything, you can buy shares in a good blue chip company in 2012, and the day you buy can make a huge difference to your overall return.

Timing is everything with shares, even if you want to hold for the longer term, take Aviva for example in 2011 they were as high as 470 pence and as low as 280 pence a share with no company statements to suggest that any fundamentals of the business had changed, of course all shares in 2011 had a volatile time due to the Euro.

Hence remember that buying shares is risky and they can go down as well as up, even in good solid business’s.

If buying shares are risky what’s a safe alternative?

The simple answer is holding cash. Whist interest rates in 2012 are still at all time lows - you can get some good ISA’s rates, UK Net compares ISA rates for you .

The golden rule to investing is do not put in what you are not prepared to lose. Please always seek independent financial advice.

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21 comments - Want to comment on this article? Click here

caesar
03/02/2013

please contact me because i wnt to trade shares for my education to continue.thanks

bsen
06/01/2013

Very helpful
Thanks.

jamdarg
18/12/2012

i dnt know noting about buy in an sell in shares i would love some help plz can anyone help me

S.Robert
12/11/2012

Great Tips!
Thank you

Natalie Zaph
03/11/2012

Is it possible to buy shares without a broker?

dhanapal
25/10/2012

it's very useful.very helpul,interesing......

RIZWAN
30/09/2012

i don't know how to buy &sell the shares on line, pls, can advive me

OPARE SAMUEL
03/09/2012

i want to buy and sell shares on internet can somebody help me to join?

dom
02/08/2012

i don't know everything about share. how to sell and buy it, and explain about how to watch it.

Investor
24/07/2012

One of the easiest way to start buying shares is:
https://uinvest.com.ua/?amigosid=5390

s. shah
11/07/2012

Hi there. I don't know any thing about buying and selling shares but I am intrested in to invest in shares. Could you please give me some advice and tips. how can I start and what are the most important things those I should look out for. Thanks