Start from "what is a stock?": brokers, deposits, buying, selling, unrealized P&L, profit, dividends and IPOs, one animation at a time.
For: complete beginners who have never touched stocks
More advanced courses that build on this one.
Slice a company into many small pieces and each piece is one share. Buy shares and you own a small part of the company.
Ordinary people can't walk into an exchange and buy stocks. A broker is the middleman that opens your account, sends your orders and holds your shares.
Moving money from your bank into your brokerage account is a deposit; moving it back is a withdrawal. You need money in the account before you can buy.
Buying means swapping cash for shares. Your cash goes down and your shares go up, but at the moment you buy, your total assets don't change.
Selling means turning the shares you hold back into cash. In a regular account you can only sell shares you already own.
More eager buyers push the price up; more eager sellers push it down. A tug-of-war that explains supply and demand.
While you hold a stock, your P&L moves every time the price moves. Until you sell, it's only a number on paper.
Sale proceeds minus purchase cost, minus fees: what's left is the profit that actually lands in your pocket.
If you buy in several rounds at different prices, what did you really pay? Your average cost decides when you break even.
Put it all together: watch the market, buy, hold, sell, and see how much you end up making.
When a company pays a dividend, the price is "cut" by that amount on the ex-dividend date. See why a dividend isn't free money, and why bonus shares don't change total value.
A company's first sale of shares to the public is an IPO. Tell the primary market from the secondary market: only the money raised at issue goes into the company's pocket.