You can buy stocks on your own by opening an online brokerage account, funding it, and placing a trade, all without a financial advisor or broker making decisions for you. The entire process takes about 15 to 30 minutes to set up, and most major platforms charge $0 per stock trade. Here’s how to do it from start to finish.
Pick a Brokerage Platform
A brokerage account is your gateway to the stock market. It works like a bank account, but instead of holding cash in savings, you use the money to buy and sell investments. Dozens of online brokers now offer commission-free stock and ETF trading, so the decision comes down to what kind of investor you are and what features matter to you.
If you’re a beginner, platforms like Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Merrill Edge stand out for their educational resources, research tools, and customer support. Fidelity and Schwab both charge $0 per stock or ETF trade and have no account minimums. Merrill Edge is a strong choice if you already bank with Bank of America, since the accounts integrate seamlessly. Similarly, Ally Invest pairs well with an existing Ally Bank relationship.
If you want a stripped-down, mobile-first experience, Robinhood and Webull are built around their apps and charge $0 for stock, ETF, and options trades. They’re designed for people who want to open an account and start trading quickly without wading through research dashboards. The tradeoff is thinner educational content and fewer analytical tools.
For more active traders who plan to make frequent trades or use advanced strategies, platforms like E-Trade, Interactive Brokers, and Tastytrade offer sophisticated charting, screeners, and multiple trading platforms. Interactive Brokers offers a free “Lite” tier alongside a “Pro” tier that starts at $1 per trade with volume discounts.
Choose the Right Account Type
Before you open your account, you’ll need to decide what type to open. The two most common choices for individual investors are a standard taxable brokerage account and a Roth IRA.
A standard brokerage account has no contribution limits and no restrictions on when you can withdraw your money. You can put in as much as you want, buy and sell freely, and pull cash out at any time. The catch is taxes: you’ll owe taxes on dividends you receive and on any profit (capital gains) when you sell a stock for more than you paid.
A Roth IRA is a retirement account. You contribute money you’ve already paid income tax on, but your investments grow tax-free, and qualified withdrawals in retirement are also tax-free. The tradeoff is that Roth IRAs have annual contribution limits and income eligibility caps, and pulling out earnings before retirement age can trigger taxes and penalties. There are no required minimum distributions, so you’re never forced to withdraw at a certain age.
Many investors open both: a Roth IRA for long-term retirement savings and a taxable brokerage account for money they might want to access sooner. Most brokers let you open multiple account types under one login.
Open and Fund Your Account
Opening an account is an online process that typically takes 10 to 15 minutes. You’ll be asked for standard personal and financial information, including your name, date of birth, Social Security number, address, phone number, email, and a government-issued ID like a driver’s license or passport.
Beyond the basics, brokers also ask about your employment status, annual income, net worth, investment experience, and investment objectives. These questions aren’t gatekeeping. Brokers are legally required to collect this information, and they use it to flag situations where a particular investment might not be appropriate for your profile. Answering honestly won’t prevent you from trading stocks.
You’ll also be asked to provide a “trusted contact,” someone the broker can reach out to if they’re ever concerned about activity on your account, such as potential fraud or signs of financial exploitation. This person does not get access to your account or your money.
Once your account is approved (often within minutes, sometimes a business day), you fund it by linking a bank account and transferring money electronically. Most brokers also accept wire transfers or checks. Some brokers make funds available for trading immediately, while others may hold a transfer for a few days until it clears.
You Don’t Need Thousands to Start
One of the biggest misconceptions about buying stocks is that you need a lot of money. Most major brokers have no account minimum, meaning you can open an account and start with whatever you have. Fractional shares make this even more accessible. Instead of buying a full share of a company that might trade at $200 or $500, you can buy a dollar amount of that stock.
Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, and SoFi Active Investing all offer fractional share trading with no commissions and no account minimum. Charles Schwab offers fractional shares of S&P 500 stocks through its Stock Slices feature for as little as $5 per stock, letting you buy up to 30 fractional shares in a single transaction. Vanguard offers fractional shares of its own ETFs but not individual stocks.
Starting small is perfectly fine. Even $50 or $100 gets you into the market and lets you learn how trading works with real money at stake.
Research a Stock Before You Buy
Once your account is funded, you can search for any publicly traded company by its name or ticker symbol (the short abbreviation used on exchanges, like AAPL for Apple or MSFT for Microsoft). Before placing a trade, spend a few minutes reviewing the basics.
Most brokerage platforms give you free access to a stock’s current price, recent price history, market capitalization (the total value of all the company’s shares), price-to-earnings ratio (a rough measure of how expensive the stock is relative to the company’s profits), dividend yield, and analyst ratings. You don’t need to understand every metric right away. At a minimum, look at what the company does, whether its revenue and earnings are growing, and how the stock has performed over the past year. Your broker’s research section and built-in screeners can help you filter stocks by industry, size, or performance.
Place Your First Trade
When you’re ready to buy, you’ll enter a trade order. This is where you tell the broker what stock you want, how many shares (or how many dollars’ worth), and how you want the order handled. The three most common order types are market orders, limit orders, and stop orders.
A market order buys the stock immediately at whatever price is currently available. It’s the simplest option and virtually guarantees your order goes through, but the exact price you pay may be slightly different from the last quoted price, especially for stocks that move quickly or trade in lower volume.
A limit order lets you set the maximum price you’re willing to pay. If you place a buy limit order at $50, your order will only execute at $50 or lower. This gives you price control, but there’s a risk the stock never drops to your limit and the order goes unfilled. Limit orders are useful when you want to avoid overpaying during volatile trading sessions.
A stop order (sometimes called a stop-loss order) triggers a trade when a stock hits a specific price. Investors commonly use sell stop orders to protect against losses. For example, if you own a stock trading at $100 and set a stop order at $90, your shares will automatically be sold if the price drops to $90. Once triggered, the stop order becomes a market order and executes at the next available price.
For your first purchase, a market order during regular trading hours (9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday) is the most straightforward approach. The price you see on screen will be very close to what you actually pay.
What Happens After You Buy
After your order executes, you’ll see the shares in your account portfolio. Stock trades settle in one business day, meaning the transaction is officially finalized the next business day after you place it. During this period, the shares show up in your account and you can sell them, but the cash from any sale won’t be fully available until settlement completes.
From here, your job is to monitor your investment. You can check your portfolio through your broker’s website or app anytime. You’ll see your current holdings, their market value, and your gain or loss on each position. If the company pays dividends, those payments will appear in your account as cash (or be automatically reinvested in more shares if you enable that option).
When you’re ready to sell, the process mirrors buying. You enter a sell order, choose your order type, and the proceeds land in your brokerage account. From there, you can reinvest or transfer the cash back to your bank. Keep in mind that profits from selling stocks in a taxable brokerage account are subject to capital gains tax. Stocks held for more than a year before selling qualify for lower long-term capital gains rates, while stocks sold within a year are taxed at your regular income tax rate.
Building From Here
Buying your first stock is a single trade, but building wealth in the market is about consistency. Many brokers let you set up automatic recurring investments, where a fixed dollar amount is invested on a schedule you choose, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. This approach, called dollar-cost averaging, removes the pressure of trying to time the market perfectly. You buy more shares when prices are low and fewer when prices are high, which smooths out your average cost over time.
If picking individual stocks feels overwhelming, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) let you buy a basket of stocks in a single trade. An S&P 500 ETF, for example, gives you exposure to 500 of the largest U.S. companies at once. ETFs trade just like stocks on your brokerage platform, carry no commission at most brokers, and offer instant diversification so your results aren’t tied to any single company’s performance.