| You need an account with a stock brokerage firm who will buy and sell stocks for you. If you do not want advice from the firm, you can use a discount service, which charges less per transaction. You need an easy means of transferring money from where you have it into that account - and, of course, back! It's simplest if you can make that transfer electronically. Many people start with a "cash account", allowing the owner to buy and sell online, using pin numbers, of course. I won't do that, for I use an old computer and fear that it may be infected with a spy that may transmit information to its boss that I don't want him (surely not "her"!) to know. I can call the discount broker on the phone, my discount brokerage allowing me to make the transaction by keying numbers on the phone. Being an old fart, I pay some more per transaction to talk to a broker to make the orders. The financial institution where you hold your money may have a preferred broker with whom they connect, but usually they can relate to various brokers equally easily. My discount broker account is held with one that is owned by a bank where I have an account, so transferring money back and forth is very simply done. With a "cash account", usually the official documentation is held in the brokerage database and they send you a report regularly, usually monthly or quarterly, giving details of the cash and stocks that you have, with current value. You can buy stocks with the total cost, plus commission, being no more than the cash balance that yuu have in your account. Some investors want to have the shares that they own issued in certificate form, which usually costs $35 - 50. per transaction, in Canada. One reason for this may be that they wish to use the certificate as collateral for a loan at a financial institution. You can have a "margin account" with the stockbroker that allows you to borrow from them to buy more stocks, and in this area they usually charge about 1% more interest rate than borrowing from a bank. If you're not familiar with the operation of the stock market, it's likely a good idea to avoid borrowing until you become quite familiar with how that system works. Otherwise, if you borrow a little too much, and the market goes down, you don't have enough collateral to cover the amount of your loan. The lender will want either:
1. more share certificates, carrying enough value to more than cover the amount of the shortage, or
2. enough cash to make up the difference. If you have given them $10,000. worth of stock, most will lend about $5,000. If the value of the underlying stocks drops to, say, $8,000., they'll be willing to lend only $4,000. So they want more stocks carrying a minimum of $2,000. value to bring the collateral level back to $10,000. But they usually ask for some more, in order to have some cushion there, in case of some more reduction in value, which would require them to call you asking for more collateral. Or if you pay them $1,000. cash (probably more like $1,200. - 1,500.) that will satisfy the shortage ... and leave a little extra, in case of need. And - they want the extra collateral ... or cash ... by later today, tomorrow at the latest. I don't like getting margin calls ... and when I ran a personal financial advisory business, I sure as heck didn't want my clients getting any (unless they were fully familiar with the system and able to take care of any problems, immediately ... and don't go on vacation, in case the market drops 15% or so, as it has in the past week)! There may be variations in the way that the system works in the U.S., and I hope that folks from the U.S. will inform you of such differences. Good wishes for increasingly skillful investing. ole joyful | 
