Buying and selling shares

When share trading, you buy and take ownership of company stock and sell the stock for a higher price with the aim of making a profit. In this instance, you would normally open a ‘nominee’ account. A stockbroker will often place trades on your behalf, for a small fee. Most share trading takes place on stock exchanges where public companies are listed. This method involves buying and selling shares outright through spot or forward contracts.

Investment is not limited to stock market indices and shares. You can also invest in exchange traded funds and mutual funds, or diversify your investment portfolio even further by investing in stocks and bonds. Alternatively, you can use derivative products like spread bets - UK only - and contracts for difference (CFDs) to trade shares. This way, you can take a long or short position and take advantage of rising and falling share prices. With spread betting and CFD trading, you do not take ownership of the actual shares you are trading. You simply speculate on whether you expect prices to rise or fall and take a position accordingly. For this reason, you do not pay stamp duty when you spread bet on shares or trade share CFDs in the UK, however, you do pay capital gains tax on CFDs and laws are subject to change in the UK.

The main differences between stock trading vs investing in shares are the amount of time involved and level of risk undertaken. Investing focuses on the long term and investors tend to adopt a buy and hold approach, known as position trading. The idea is to gradually build up wealth over a longer period of time, which is generated through buying and taking ownership of shares.

Investors will generally research a company's fundamentals before buying shares, which is commonly used when investing into rising companies during a specific period of time, such as water stocks and pharmaceutical stocks. They try to determine the wealth prospect of shares in the medium to long term. Investments are often held for a period of years, or longer. Market conditions may fluctuate over time, but this has less of an impact on long-term value investing.

Trading, on the other hand, focuses on the short term. It involves the frequent buying and selling of shares. The aim is to take advantage of quick price movements in the stock market to make a profit. Very often, traders will hold stocks for less than a day, which is a short-term strategy called day trading. Trading can have higher potential returns than investing.

However, it is also higher risk because there can be sudden, sharp price movements in the market. Traders generally tend to analyse a share’s current trend in the market using a range of technical analysis tools such as technical indicators. Numerous trading platforms these days offer technical analysis tools to help you refine your share trading strategy.

Shares are bought and sold on a network of global exchanges. For example, most UK shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange. US-listed shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Only certain people can buy and sell shares on exchanges, so most people trade shares via a stock broker. View our article on stock market trading hours​ to familiarise yourself with all the major stock exchanges around the world.

There are some costs you should consider when buying and selling shares through an online broker. The main fees applicable to buying and selling shares are account fees and commissions. Online brokers will charge different account fees. For example, they may charge you a monthly, quarterly or annual account fee. Sometimes, fees may be waived if you make a minimum number of trades, or if your account is a certain size.

Typically, when you spread bet shares, an additional spread will be built into the price of the shares displayed on the trading platform. This will be applicable upon execution of any order. The additional spread is one of the costs associated with placing a spread bet on a share. When trading share CFDs, a commission will be charged upon execution of any order. Minimum commission charges may apply and can be charged at a flat rate or as a percentage. Read about our CFD commission rates​ here.

An investment portfolio is a collection of assets held by an individual. Most portfolios are made up of shares, bonds, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs)​. Generally, they will contain a mixture of different asset classes, including cash, real estate investment trusts​ and ‘hard’ assets such as gold.

The types of investments in a portfolio are usually chosen based on different risk-reward combinations. For example, low risk, low-yield investments and high risk, high-yield investments.

Different investments also have different types of income streams. These can include steady but fixed, or varied but with potential for growth. Investment professionals consider ‘diversification’ a key part of building a portfolio. This means having a range of different asset classes, as well as different types of risk-rewards and income streams. Investing in a range of asset classes in your portfolio helps to spread your risk.

The risks of share trading depend on your method of trading. If you are buying, holding or selling shares outright, then the most obvious risk is that the shares can depreciate in value. Small losses in value will often balance out over time, but it’s possible for share prices to crash, or for a company in which you own shares to go out of business. Stock market crashes are also possible. For example, in 2008, the FTSE 100 nearly halved in value in just a few weeks. Instances like this are generally related to the overall economic outlook.

What you invest in can also have an impact on your overall risk. It’s important to diversify your portfolio. For example, if you invested in the shares of three different energy companies, you are limiting yourself to one sector. If anything impacts on the value of that sector, it’s likely all your shares would be affected. Traders often prefer, therefore, to invest across different sectors to prevent this from happening. Established companies such as blue-chip stocks​ are also likely to be lower risk than new, unestablished start-ups, although this cannot be guaranteed.

If you are using derivative products such as spread bets or CFDs, then your risks will be slightly different. Spread bets and CFDs are leveraged products. This means you get greater market exposure with a smaller outlay of capital. However, profits and losses will both be based on the full value of any trade, so it is possible to lose all of your capital. You should read about our risk management​ tools before placing a trade.

Opening a UK share trading account is a simple and quick process. To start trading right away, open a live account here. You may want to familiarise yourself first with our online trading platform, which comes complete with technical tools, indicators, charts and graphs.

You can trade over 8500 shares and exchange-traded funds on our online trading platform​, Next Generation. It has an abundance of market data, price charts and graphs, and financial reports from reputable sources all over the world, making it a favourable share trading platform. We also offer share basket trading​ on a number of stock clusters; click the link for more information.

Share trading is the buying and selling of stock with the aim of making a profit. There are two ways that traders can approach share trading. Either you buy, hold and sell shares outright through a ‘nominee’ account. Or, you can trade shares using derivative products such as spread bets or CFDs. Inevitably, both of these methods involve risk. Ultimately, your investment goals will define your approach to trading shares. When share trading via spread betting or CFD trading you have the option to trade both sides of the market. See more on how to short stocks​ here.