Buying shares is a popular way of building financial wealth. When you buy shares (also known as stocks), you are buying a slice of ownership in a company.
Investors buy and sell shares on a stock exchange and grow their wealth in two ways: collecting dividends (company profits) or taking advantage of a rise in value of your shares.
Get access to more than 35,000 shares with CMC Markets.
An award-winning provider with over 30 years' experience
Investors have thousands of options when it comes to buying company shares, across a wide range of industries and markets.
For example, new share traders can look first to the top publicly listed businesses internationally or within their own market. These 'blue-chip' companies are usually listed under indexes like the S&P Asia 50 and the ASX 50. They are characterised as well-established businesses with low price volatility and steady growth.
On the other hand, share traders can invest in companies that are new with an unproven share price record. This means a less predictable stock price trajectory and increased risk, which can lead to a higher or lower return on your investment.
Investors can also get access to groups of shares through CMC Markets' exchange traded funds (ETFs), mFunds and more. These options diversify your risk within an industry or an index versus trading on a single share. Trade on a range of trending themes across technology, lifestyle and entertainment, renewables, banking and more in markets all over the world.
Before you can start trading in shares, you will need to choose a trusted and verified stockbroker that provides access to financial markets.
Choosing a stockbroker that has access to local and global markets is crucial to diversifying your portfolio and discovering trade opportunities.
Your stockbroker should provide access to a broad range of financial markets, news and analysis. Most importantly, they should cover thousands of different investment products including shares, mFunds, ETFs, options and more.
A CMC Markets Invest account enables you to easily and efficiently access shares and financial markets. It includes competitive online brokerage, order processing in less than a second, and unlimited free conditional orders for all clients. Our share trading platforms also give you access to in-built fundamental research and risk analysis tools.
As with any form of investment, it's important to be aware of the financial risks involved with share trading. Before you start investing, we recommend having an investment strategy in place to minimise losses.
Different share trading strategies will suit different investors according to their financial expertise, risk appetite and resources.
For example, value investing is a long-term investment strategy that focuses on buying and holding stocks that have the potential to grow or increase in value.
Meanwhile, algorithmic share trading strategies allow you to execute orders using automated pre-programmed share trading instructions, which account for various criteria including price, time, volume and quantity.
Keen investors can also use fundamental analysis like price-earnings (P/E) ratios to value a company's shares.
