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How to Buy and Sell Stocks on Your Smartphone

Author: Craig Lloyd / Source: howtogeek.com

The stock market can be a scary place, especially if you’re just getting into trading or investing. However, some smartphone apps help decrease the barrier-to-entry and make it easy to get going. Robinhood is my favorite.

Disclaimer: We are not a personal finance blog, so we are not offering advice on what stocks you should trade, or whether trading or investing in individual stocks is the right choice for you.

Rather, we’ just want to show how easily you can get started right on your smartphone. After that, you’re on your own, kid!

There are a few apps that make it easy to start buying and selling stocks, but the one I like the best is Robinhood—mainly because it’s completely free to use and it’s a great app for both long-term investing and regular day/swing trading.

Most—if not all—brokerage firms charge some kind of commission or fee for each trade you perform. Some firms charge a percentage; others charge a flat fee. Robinhood, however, doesn’t charge a fee or commission at all, making it a great platform for those who don’t really have a whole lot of money to trade stocks (and commissions and fees can easily eat into small returns).

So how does Robinhood make money? They simply collect the interest from any uninvested cash that you have sitting in your Robinhood account.

Robinhood also sports a super simple and clean user interface. This ease of use is great for someone just starting out, and who doesn’t want to be bombarded with numbers, percentages, and charts all over the place.

On the other hand, Robinhood’s simple interface can be considered a bit of a downside, as the app doesn’t include much in the way of analysis tools other than a simple line chart.

Robinhood is really only meant as a platform for buying and selling stocks, leaving you to fend for yourself as far as research and analysis is concerned. Thankfully, though, there are a ton of great resources available out there.

How to Get Started with Robinhood

Before you get too deep into the application process, it’s important to note that there are some certain criteria you need to meet first:

You must be 18 years or older.
You need a valid social security number ( a taxpayer identification number won’t do).
You need a residential address within the US.
You must be either a US citizen, permanent resident, or have a valid visa.

You can submit an application for Robinhood on your computer through their website. It’s a pretty simple signup process. However, be prepared to provide some personal information about yourself, including your address, date of birth, social security number, and a copy of your driver’s license. This stuff is needed to prove your identity, and Robinhood will also pull your credit report. This means you might have to wait a few days to get approval, although it could be as little as an hour.