Stock Trading Basics

Stock Trading. You hear that phrase all the time; although it really is wrong – you don’t trade stocks like baseball cards (I’ll trade you 100 IBM’s for 100 Intel’s).

Trade = Buy or Sell

To “trade” means to buy and sell in the slang of the financial markets. How a system that can put up one billion shares trading in a single day works is a mystery to nearly everyone people. No doubt, our financial markets are marvels of technological competence.

Yet, they still must handle your order for 100 shares of peak Kumquats with the same care and documentation as my order of 100,000 shares of Metacarpus.

You don’t need to know all of the technical details of how you buy and sell stocks; however it is important to have a basic understanding of how the markets work. If you want to tunnel deeper.