Simulator How-To Guide: Purchasing Stocks

Now that you're familiar with your trading account interface, let's go ahead and execute your first stock purchase. We will buy 100 shares of a well-known American corporation, Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE: WMT), using the following steps.

After logging into your Simulator account, click on the "Trade" tab near the side of the screen.

In the Trade a Stock screen, type in ‘WMT' in the Symbol field and ‘100' in the Quantity field, leaving all other fields at their default settings, as shown here:

Ignore all the other settings and click Preview Order to proceed to the order confirmation screen:

(*Note that the stock price and all associated numbers may be different than those below since they're always changing due to the inherent volatility of the stock market.)

Take a minute to review the details of your order. As you can see, you are buying 100 shares of WMT at its market price. Your transaction type is Buy Market Order (Buy MO), which means you want to buy shares of WMT at the current market price. In order to simulate a real online trade, your play money account will be "charged" a commission of $19.99 per trade. Brokerage firms commonly charge commissions for the service of executing trades.

Click on Submit Order button to confirm your purchase of 100 WMT shares. Your order is now confirmed and will be filled at the first available opportunity. Please note that if you have made your order outside normal market hours (9:30 am – 4:00 pm Eastern Time), your order will be filled at the start of the next trading day. If you place the order during regular business hours, you'll see WMT in your portfolio within 20 minutes. To learn more about why there is a 20-minute delay, click here.

[ Investopedia's Simulator is a great place to learn about day trading and practice making trades without risking real capital. If you're interested in learning more about day trading, Investopedia's Become a Day Trader course provides an in-depth overview of day trading strategies with over five hours of on-demand video, exercises, and interactive content. ]

Order Confirmation

After submitting your order, you'll see a page that confirms that your orders has been successfully accepted by the stock simulator.

Furthermore, the stock simulator will also show you the 5 stocks that currently have the biggest gains and biggest losses in the market. This information can be a good jumping off point for other stocks to trade!

Now that you've purchased your first stock, let's review the details of your holdings in the next section.