Once you've opened and funded your account, you can buy and sell stocks. But before you do that, you want to get a real-time stock quote to confirm the current price of the stock. Your brokerage may provide real-time quotes as part of your service. Many free financial news sites offer delayed quotes, which are at least twenty minutes behind the market. If the market is moving quickly, a delayed quote can be substantially different from the real trading price.
Once you've gotten your quote and decided you want to make a trade, you can choose to place a market order or a limit order. A market order executes at the current market price of the stock. A limit order, however, executes at or better than a price you specify. If the price doesn't reach the limit you set, your trade will not go through.
Some brokerages offer additional options, often used to prevent high losses when a stock price is falling. These include:
- Stop order - A form of market order, this executes after the price falls through a point that you set. The order executes at market price, not at the stop point.
- Stop limit order - These are like stop orders, but they execute at a price you set rather than market price. In rapidly moving markets, the broker may not be able to execute your order at your set price, meaning that the stock you own may continue to fall in value.
- Trailing stop order - Like a stop order, a trailing stop executes when the price falls through a point you set. However, its selling price is moving instead of fixed. You set a parameter in points or as a percentage, and the sale executes when the price falls by that amount. If the price increases, though, the parameter moves upward with it. So, if a stock is trading at $20 per share, and you set a trailing stop order with a three-point parameter, your initial selling price would be $17 per share. But if the price then increases to $25 per share, your new selling price would be $22 per share.
You must also select whether your order stays active until the end of the day, until a specific date or until you cancel it. Some brokerages allow you to place "all or none" or "fill or kill" orders, which prevent a partial rather than complete exchange of the stocks you want to trade.
Contrary to many people's perceptions, making trades online is not instantaneous, even if you're placing a market order. It can take time to find a buyer or seller and to electronically process the trade. Also, even though you can access your account and place buy and sell orders twenty-four hours a day, your trades execute only when the markets are open. An exception is if your firm allows after-hours trading, which is riskier due to the reduced number of trades taking place.
Online Stock Fraud
With erratic prices, corporate scandals and "market corrections," you may think you already have enough to worry about when it comes to trading stocks. But there is one more important worry to add to the pile -- investment fraud.
Long before the days of online trading, a few unscrupulous brokers defrauded investors or absconded with their money. Fraudulent firms known as boiler rooms have also employed brokers to make unsolicited phone calls to investors, selling bogus or overvalued stock. People must evaluate their broker's ethics and judgment, and part of the broker's job is to protect investors from fraudulent stocks.
With online trading, though, people must research stocks on their own, deciding what to buy and sell without the help of a broker or an investment planner. Fraudsters have taken advantage of this, leading to several notable methods of defrauding investors. These include:
- Pump-and-dump schemes - People spread the word about a "sure thing" stock via online message boards, online stock newsletters, email and other methods. The resulting interest in the stock drives up the price. The organizers of the scheme sell their stocks for a huge profit, and then stop promoting it. The price plummets, and investors lose money.
- Fraudulent IPOs - Some investors like IPOs because they provide a chance to "get in on the ground floor" and to make a substantial profit. Some scammers, though, spread the word about an upcoming IPO for companies that never intend to go public or that don't exist. Then, they abscond with investor' money.
- Fraudulent OTC stocks - Con artists promote stock in companies that do not exist or start a pump-and-dump scheme for an OTC stock. After investors buy stock in non-existent companies, scammers simply take the money and run.
- Fraudulent company information - Publicly traded companies have to release information about financial performance. Overstating or misrepresenting a company's goals and achievements can drive up the stock price.
Fortunately, you can protect yourself from most of this by doing your own research. In addition to researching your brokerage, you should research any company you plan to invest in, including reading annual reports and financial statements. You should also check the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis & Retrieval (EDGAR) system, especially if you are going to participate in an IPO. EDGAR includes IPO information and periodic reports from companies in the United States and other countries. Filing information with EDGAR is required by law.
Also, it's always a good idea to remember that if a stock deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.
