Summary
Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, Inc. is an American technology conglomerate, well known as the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and other products and services in the virtual reality space, like Oculus Quest and Horizon Worlds. It is headquartered in Menlo Park, a small city in Silicon Valley in the south San Francisco Bay Area, California. The company’s origin story begins in 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg, a sophomore at Harvard University, founded TheFacebook, an online platform for Harvard students to register and connect with each other.
In 2012, the parent company went public with its initial public offering (IPO) on May 18. It was one of the largest tech IPOs in history at the time, raising over $16 billion, with the offering valuing Facebook at around $104 billion, making it the most valuable newly public technology company at that time. Since then, Facebook’s share price and Meta valuation have continued to rise over the years, with the company reaching $1 trillion on June 28, 2021. However, the company’s market capitalization dropped in subsequent months to a valuation of almost $700 billion, where it stands currently.
For investors interested in trading Meta shares, this guide article will show you how to buy Meta (META) shares step-by-step, the pros and cons of investing in it, factors to consider when buying Meta shares, trading platforms used by brokers that offer the share, fees, and commissions you may likely pay when trading, and what traders in social communities like Reddit and Quora think about Meta stocks.
Here are a few quick steps on how to buy Meta stocks for beginners:
- Select an Online Stockbroker
- Create a Brokerage Account
- Deposit Funds
- Buy Meta Shares
- Manage your Meta Positions
Here are some of the benefits and downsides of buying shares in Meta:
Pros
- One of the Largest Tech Conglomerates in the World
- Constantly Growing
- More Stable than Most Shares
- Increased Portfolio Diversity
- Large Annual Revenue
Cons
- Mired in Scandals and Political Issues
- Risky with its Venture into Virtual Reality
Before you make the decision to invest in some Meta shares, there are a few factors you should consider. Do some research on each of these factors and ensure you are satisfied before you venture into buying shares.
Commissions & Fees
You need a stock broker to trade with before you can buy Meta shares. These stock brokers are financial companies that offer access to the stock market so that you can trade your preferred stock. As compensation for their services, these companies have a fee and commission structure that charges customers for buying stocks on their platforms. The most common fee you will come across is the spread, which is the difference in the bid and ask prices of an asset, in this case, a Meta stock.
You may also pay commissions to brokers that charge commissions for every transaction, and inactivity fees for leaving your account dormant for an extended period of time. Check the broker’s website to see the fees they charge and if you are satisfied with them.
Stock Brokers Regulation
When trading with stock brokers, it is important to know that the stock broker is reliable and trustworthy, since they will be storing your money and personal details. However, because nobody can guarantee the trustworthiness of the other party, it is important to have a group of regulations that guide stock trading so that one party isn’t cheated.
Stock brokers are regulated by bodies within the region they operate to ensure they safeguard investors’ funds and personal information. Always check to confirm that the stock broker you wish to work with is registered with the regulatory body in your country. Common regulatory bodies around the world include The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in the USA, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in Australia, and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK.
Trading Platforms
A trading platform is a software application that brokers use to offer traders access to the stock market. The choice of trading platform is important as good trading platforms usually mean better trading experience for investors. You can access tools like charts, news, and trading insights that allow you to make better choices when carrying out fundamental and technical analyses.
Check if the broker offers a proprietary trading platform, a third-party platform, or a mix of both. You can use a demo account to test the platforms available on the broker and see if you like them enough to trade with them.
Leverage Availability
Leveraged trading means trading larger positions than would have been possible with just your trading capital. In other words, you borrow money from your broker to open larger trading positions and reap the benefits if you’re successful. However, it is a two-edged sword. If you make a loss, the effect can be catastrophic.
For this reason, different regulatory bodies have regulations on leveraged trading. For example, the FCA has a 1:5 leverage limit on stocks, meaning brokers cannot offer investors more than 5 times their capital to trade with.
Also, check that the broker offers CFDs. CFDs allow you to trade on the price movements of an underlying asset without actually owning the asset. They are complex products with high risk, so keep in mind that you could lose your trading funds.
If you are an experienced trader who knows how to use leverages well, check the broker you wish to trade with to confirm that they offer leverages and are regulated by the appropriate body in your jurisdiction.
Meta Stock Performance
Another important research you should carry out before deciding to buy Meta shares is studying the company’s stock performance for an extended period. Google Finance provides information on the growth or decline of stock prices from the time the company went public till date. You can also study the company’s stock performance for the past week, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, etc.
When carrying out this research, compare the stock performance to other stocks within the same industry and the stock market in general. This will give you a better understanding of how the stock has truly performed.
Meta Past Dividends
Meta does not pay dividends on its stocks to shareholders. What they do instead is retain their earnings and use them to further invest in the company to grow it and increase the value of shares to their shareholders. This is important to know if you are interested in taking home stock dividends for your shares annually. If you decide to buy Meta shares, you have to be in it for the long haul.
A good plan on how to buy Meta (META) shares involves studying the best trading platforms available. This is because your choice of trading platforms can drastically improve your trading experience. Broadly speaking, there are two main classes of trading platforms: proprietary and third-party trading platforms. Proprietary trading platforms are trading platforms created by a broker exclusively for traders registered with that broker, while third-party trading platforms are open for use by all trading brokers.
Proprietary trading platforms have become more popular in recent times as brokers now look to have their own flexible system. However, third-party platforms like MT5 are still more widely used to trade stocks. Both types of trading platforms exist on mobile and desktop devices.
Desktop Trading Platforms
A desktop trading platform is a piece of trading software available on desktop computers. You can use these platforms by downloading them on your computer or visiting the broker’s website to log in on your desktop.
These trading platforms have the advantage of providing good screen real estate to investors, allowing them access to multiple tools at once and improving the overall trading experience. However, they have one major downside: lack of portability. You can’t trade with them on the go.
Both proprietary and third-party trading platforms are available as desktop trading platforms. Brokers like eToro and Capital.com offer proprietary trading platforms, while brokers like Admiral Markets and Pepperstone offer third-party trading platforms like MT5.
Mobile Apps
You can use trading platforms on your mobile phone or tablet if you prefer trading on-the-go. Mobile trading platforms are available as mobile apps or mobile versions of the online trading platform. You can download the mobile app on Google PlayStore for Android devices and the Apple Store for iOS devices.
Mobile apps have the advantage of being portable, i.e. you can trade with them on the go. However, since mobile phones are much smaller than desktop devices, they do not provide great screen real estate for traders. Having to trade on a small mobile phone screen could be uncomfortable for some investors.
Other benefits of using mobile apps include access to real-time news and notifications since you can always carry your smartphone around. You can use brokers with proprietary trading platforms like eToro and Capital.com or brokers with third-party platforms like Pepperstone and FxPro.
Buying Meta shares comes with some extra fees and commissions apart from the cost of the stock itself.
Trading Fees
Trading fees are fees charged on your trading account only when you carry out trading transactions on your account. Some common trading fees are:
Spreads: It is the difference between the buy and sell price of stocks. Spreads often occur on dealing broker platforms as a result of market dynamics, liquidity, supply and demand for that stock, and also a small markup added by the broker to compensate themselves for providing liquidity to the investor.
Commission: Some brokers charge a flat commission on every transaction you make. This amount is dependent on the broker and the transaction. Brokers like eToro and Capital.com are commission-free, so you don’t have to pay commission on them.
Overnight Fees: These are fees you pay for holding on a leveraged position overnight. It also depends on the broker and the amount of leverage you use.
Non-Trading Fees
These are fees you pay without having to carry out transactions on your trading account. Examples are:
Inactivity Fee: These are fees you pay when you leave your account dormant for many months at a time.
Currency conversion Fee: These are charges you pay to convert from one currency to another, usually from your local currency to the one accepted by the platform.
Deposit and Withdrawal Fee: This is the extra fee you pay for depositing and withdrawing money to and from your trading account.
About Meta (META)
Meta (Formerly Known As Facebook) is the brainchild of American entrepreneur, Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg and some of his friends created TheFacebook in 2004 as a way to connect Harvard students with one another. The platform then grew as a networking platform to connect students in Ivy League schools, the students in most universities in Canada and the US.
Over time, TheFacebook transformed into Facebook, the biggest social media platform in the world. It bought Instagram just before its IPO in 2012 for $1 billion, and Whatsapp for $19 billion two years later. Facebook then rebranded into Meta in late 2021, as a way of showing the company’s new broad vision and focus on the Metaverse, an immersive and interconnected virtual space where people can interact, work, and play using virtual reality, augmented reality, and other advanced technologies.
Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook, Inc.) went public on May 18, 2012, with a share price of $38. The stock closed at $38.23 on that day, slightly above the IPO price. As of August 25, 2023, the Meta share price is $279.40. The company has a total of 2.87 billion shares outstanding and a market capitalization of over $700 billion. Meta Platforms currently has over 3.5 billion users across all its platforms and has grown steadily in topline revenue and stock value since its IPO in 2012.
We went through Reddit and Quora, two of the largest social communities online to see what they thought about buying Meta shares.
Reddit is a forum where over 500 million people come together to talk about everything from their favorite TV shows to the latest news. We went through many Reddit threads to see what people thought about buying shares in Meta.
On one thread, we found a Redditor asking why other investors thought buying Meta was a risk. According to the original poster (OP), Meta had increased bottom line growth by 68%, invested tens of billions into R & D, and was the biggest company in VR. To the OP, buying Meta was a sound decision, but they wanted to know why people thought otherwise.
One Redditor responded, saying they thought Virtual Reality was a useless business since very few people are interested in using it
Another Redditor said they thought Facebook had been static for a while without any new innovation, and that VR was going to be a niche market, not mainstream like many other social media platforms owned or operated by Facebook.
Quora
Just like Reddit, Quora is another social community with hundreds of millions of people where users talk about everything from politics to sports and finance.
We went through a few Quora posts to see what people said about how to buy Meta (META) shares and if it was worth buying.
The first thread we saw was from a user asking if it was a good idea to buy shares in Meta. Another user responded, telling him it was probably a bad idea to buy Meta shares since he believed many Metaverse companies would not last and that Instagram and Facebook had been losing out to TikTok for a while now.
Another user explained that the choice to buy Meta stocks was dependent on the type of investor the person was. A long-term investor would probably gain more from investing in a share like META since he believed the company would have good long-term growth over time. However, a short-term investor could lose out a lot by focusing on short-term price crashes that came after the rebranding of the company to Meta.
Bottom Line
Meta Platforms is one of the largest conglomerates in the world, making its shares some of the most desired by investors worldwide. In this guide article, we went through a step-by-step process on how to buy Meta (META) shares with a registered broker. We discussed some characteristics to look out for when selecting a broker, like the regulations and fees offered by the broker. We also looked at trading platforms and their different kinds.
Finally, we discussed fees you may likely come across when buying Meta shares on registered broker platforms. We also went through some opinions by Reddit and Quora users on Meta shares, and although many of them didn’t have an optimistic outlook on the stock, we believe it is important to do your due diligence and carry out research to determine if investing in Meta shares is worth it for you.
Q & A
Facebook was launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and some friends, and the rebranding into Meta took place in October 2021.
Facebook became Meta on October 28, 2021.
The largest Meta shareholder is Mark Zuckerberg, owning 13.57% of shares. Other top shareholders include The Vanguard Group, Inc. (7.06%) and Blackrock, Inc. (5.97%).
Mark Zuckerberg is the owner and CEO of Meta Platforms, Inc.
Yes, Meta has been profitable since 2009.
Meta went public on May 18, 2012. It was known as Facebook at that time, and its IPO was one of the largest in tech history at the time.
The current total market capitalization of all Meta shares is $698.63B.
According to various sources, there are over 2.58 billion Meta shares outstanding.
You can buy Meta shares by registering with a broker that offers access to the NASDAQ stock exchange. Then search for Meta using its name or ticker symbol (META). Enter the amount you wish to trade with and click on “Trade”
Meta shares have been relatively more stable than other shares, but it is important to do your due diligence and ask for guidance before deciding to trade them as a beginner.
Yes, you can trade Meta stock as CFDs.
The minimum amount you can invest in Meta shares depends on the minimum amount set by the broker. For example, eToro requires that you trade with at least $10 when buying stocks like Meta.
You can buy Meta shares from any broker that offers access to the NASDAQ stock exchange. Examples of these brokers are eToro, Capital.com, IG Markets, Pepperstone, etc.
Whether or not Meta shares are a good buy for you depends on your strategy and goals for stock trading.
Yes, Meta Share is considered a blue chip stock.
Meta shares have been growing at an annual rate of about 12.5% since its launch.
Yes, you can buy fractional shares of Meta through stock trading platforms that allow fractional share investing, like eToro.
There are different possible fees and commissions you could come across when trading Meta shares depending on the broker and your trading method. The most common one is spread, which is the difference between the ask and bid price of a Meta stock. You can also pay a flat commission on Meta shares traded if your broker charges that way. Other fees like inactivity, conversion, and overnight fees are also possibilities when buying Meta shares.
