I know you haven’t opened a demo account yet.
How do I know? Because most college students procrastinate. It’s in our nature. We wait until the last minute to start a paper; the last hour before the exam to study for it; and the last year before graduation to figure out where we want to work. But if you want to be a financial success, you need to take action.
Today we are going to blast away procrastination and help you place your first trade in 3 easy steps.
Step 1: Go to Wall Street Survivor.com and click register. Type in a Username, Password and Email Address. Once, you are registered, click ‘Continue with the Free Account’. (Skip the free offers page as well.)
Free Stock Trading Demo Account
Step 2: Open a new tab with finance.yahoo.com. Click in the middle of the page on top stories and find a stock symbol on that page. As I write this, the top story is about Comcast and GE. So I could use CMCSA or GE.
Step 3: Go back to your demo account on Wall Street Survivor. Scroll down to the middle of the page. There should be a box where you can type in a symbol. Type in the symbol you just found from Yahoo and enter the number 100 in Quantity. Leave the default selection for Order Type as Market and the Duration as Good for the Day. Click Preview. Make sure the order is correct. Then click on the green Place Order button. If you are testing this on a non-trading day such as the weekend or the holiday, you will have to change the Duration as Good Til Canceled in order that your trade will go through at market open.
You did it! (Or you read through this post and made a mental note to do this later.) If you did place your first trade know you see how easy it really is. Obviously for your future trades you will want to put some more thought into what stock you choose but you can just review our post on picking a stock for a good start.
Sometimes the hardest step is admitting you are a procrastinator.
Did you open a demo account? Let us know what your first trade was. Post a comment below.
About LaTisha
Hmm…cool website. Thanks for the recommendation!
Let me know how your trading goes!
Congrats on the new home since you out-grew your other one. :) Welcome home. Looks great. :)
Thanks!
I bought Sprint. When do I sell it?
Hi Tara, unfortunately I cannot advise on what to buy/sell or when to buy or sell. Check out our tutorial on trading with technical analysis here if you are interested in timing your trades. But you will also find lots on stock research on this site too.