Want to jump straight to the best? Most of our users prefer Interactive Brokers for stock trading.
You’ve saved up $10,000 to invest and you’re sure you want to buy Google stock, but you aren’t sure where to begin?
Never fear. Take just a few simple steps and you’ll see it’s relatively easy to understand how to set up your Google stock purchase. (Buying any other company’s stock will be a snap, for that matter.)
Contents
Step 1: Set up a brokerage account
In order to make any transaction in the stock market, you’ll need to set up an account with an online or local stockbroker.
Many brokers offer a variety of products and a suite of offerings. Choosing the right broker or any other large or small broker requires research into the fees and products available as well as any preferences on service and support.
Luckily, Benzinga compiled a list of the Best Online Brokerages to help you narrow down your choice. Don’t have time to read through the list?
Check out our quick picks for the best online stock trading brokerages below.
Webull, founded in 2017, is a mobile app-based brokerage that features commission-free stock and exchange-traded fund (ETF) trading. It’s regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Webull offers active traders technical indicators, economic calendars, ratings from research agencies, margin trading and short-selling. Webull’s trading platform is designed for intermediate and experienced traders, although beginning traders can also benefit.
Webull is widely considered one of the best Robinhood alternatives.
- Active traders
- Intermediate traders
- Advanced traders
- No account maintenance fees or software platform fees
- No charges to open and maintain an account
- Intuitive trading platform with technical and fundamental analysis tools
- Does not support trading in mutual funds, bonds or OTC stocks
SoFi’s mission is simple: to help reach clients like you reach their financial independence and realize their ambitions. SoFi knows that this independence comes from making decisions that help your money start to work for you in the long run. The brand helps individuals make these decisions through personal financial products such as personal loans, student loans and automated and active investing.
The brand additionally provides in-person experiences such as educational and networking events, personalized guidance from experienced financial planners and one-on-one advising with professional career coaches. SoFi’s services have been highlighted in outlets such as Forbes, Medium, and CNBC’s Make It.
- IPO Investing
- Mobile Investing
- U.S.-based customer service
- Highly-rated mobile app for iPhone and Android
- Only available in the U.S.
Moomoo is a commission-free mobile trading app available on Apple, Google and Windows devices. A subsidiary of Futu Holdings Ltd., it’s backed by venture capital affiliates of Matrix, Sequoia, and Tencent (NASDAQ: FUTU). Securities offered by Futu Inc., regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Moomoo is another great alternative for Robinhood. This is an outstanding trading platform if you want to dive deep into smart trading. It offers impressive trading tools and opportunities for both new and advanced traders, including advanced charting, pre and post-market trading, international trading, research and analysis tools, and most popular of all, free Level 2 quotes.
Get started right away by downloading Moomoo to your phone, tablet or another mobile device.
- Cost-conscious traders
- Active and Advanced traders
- Over 8,000 different stocks that can be sold short
- Access trading and quotes in pre-market (4 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. ET) and post-market hours (4 p.m. to 8 p.m. ET)
- No minimum deposit to open an account.
- No chat support
It seems like new digital investment management platforms are sprouting up left and right, and for good reason — there’s a great need for easy, straightforward investment management that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg in fees or to get started. If you’re new to investing or an old hat who wants to make the switch to a virtual manager, deciding which features you need can be confusing if not overwhelming.
If you want a no-frills financial management platform, Axos Invest (formerly WiseBanyan) takes a traditional but sophisticated approach to automated online investing.
- Traditional investors trying out an automated investor for the first time
- New investors that want to take a hands-off approach to portfolio management
- Straightforward automated investing
- Relatively low account minimum and automated investing fee
- A solid roster of available investment account types
- Not a stand-out from other services if you’re someone who likes all the bells and whistles with your digital financial platform
- No direct relationship with a human financial advisor
This latest groundbreaking technology is IBKR GlobalAnalyst, a new trading tool that helps investors compare the rate of PEG or price-earnings growth valuations and provide more immediate and comprehensive financial metrics of stocks, globally.
Recognizing that stock selection can be challenging for investors to compare the valuations of domestic and international stocks, Interactive Brokers created GlobalAnalyst to offer investors a simple, yet powerful tool to easily evaluate investment opportunities around the world.
Using GlobalAnalyst, investors can search for stocks by region, country, industry, market capitalization and currency to uncover undervalued stocks worldwide. The resulting table displays the current market and financial metrics, including the PEG Ratio. The PEG Ratio is the PE ratio divided by the three-year compound earnings growth rate, and smaller PEG Ratios typically indicate undervalued companies.
- Price earnings growth valuations
- Easily evaluate investment opportunities
eToro is a broker that offers access to over 25 of the world’s most popular cryptocurrencies, forex and over 1600 stocks. They have a few unique education and useability tools. Traders can begin buying and selling in as little as 10 minutes.
eToro’s unique CopyTrader feature allows new investors to “copy” the buy and sell orders of professional investors, while the company’s eToro Club feature provides investors with a range of additional education tools and resources.
- Traders looking for an easy-to-use platform
- Traders who want to practice their trades using a virtual account before entering the market
- Simple platform that is easy to master
- CopyTrader feature that allows new traders to copy the same strategies used by professionals
- Virtual dummy account that gives you $100,000 to practice trades
- High non-trading fees
Most brokerages allow investors to set up an account online as well as over the phone. It’s a pretty simple process. They’ll require the following in order to set up an account:
- Basic information, including name and address
- Personal investing experience, goals, as well as social security number information.
Once the information has been gathered, the brokerage will notify when they will determine if the account has been approved or not. Click here to buy stock through a top broker.
Step 2: Fund the account
Once an account has been approved, the next step is to fund the account. If the brokerage is part of the same institution that you bank with, it will often allow you to transfer funds directly from checking or savings accounts.
Otherwise, funding will generally need to be wired or transferred from approved institutions. Brokerages almost never allow funding of accounts based on credit card, thus requiring actual funds to be transferred.
Step 3: Transact
After an account has been set up with a broker, the next thing to do is to purchase the stock. Most brokerages have similar setups to the picture displayed. The main components are:
- Symbol of the company: GOOGL
- Action: Buy or sell
- Order type: Limit, market, stop market and stop limit
- Limit price (if choosing a limit order), or stop price (if choosing a stop order)
- Duration: Day or good until canceled
In order to determine how much stock to purchase, take the dollar value that is to be invested and divide it by the current share price, rounding down to the nearest whole number.
That amount is the maximum amount of shares that can be purchased at the current stock price. The main orders most investors use are limit and market orders. Limit orders only fill at a specific price when it is reached, while market orders execute at the current ask price, which is the price currently offered for sale.
Once the buy button is selected, you’ll be asked to confirm the transaction before it is sent. Once sent, the broker displays a confirmation number or transaction number. The broker may or may not display an alert once the stock has been purchased, so check back often.
Step 4: Check the position and move forward
Now that the position has been established, most brokerages will have a screen or area where you can view your portfolio.The portfolio will generally display the average entry or transaction price that the stock was bought at, change since the close, as well as change since the purchase.
You can typically view the overall performance of the stock or their entire portfolio on one screen. The changes will be displayed in percentages as well as in total dollar value.
Step 5: Close out the position
When Google’s stock price gets near the level that you wish to sell, enter an exit transaction similar to the way that you did the entry transaction. Follow all the same steps; the only difference is:
- You select a sell order, and the amount of shares that are sold can be up to a maximum of the total shares that you own.
At this point the entire process is complete. You can evaluate your performance for the individual stock by looking at the difference between the entry and exit prices, as well as any dividends collected.
Final thoughts
Choosing a brokerage is the hardest part of buying Google stock. Once you are familiar with the stock-buying process, acquiring Google stock isn’t any different than buying Amazon, Facebook, or any other stock on the market.
Want to learn more about investing? Check out Benzinga’s guides to investing in the internet of things, how to trade stocks for free and the best investing books for beginners.
Related content: HOW TO BUY CASTOR MARITIME (CTRM) STOCK