What is Stockbroker?
A stockbroker is a capital market representative and a licensed agent who executes buy and sell orders submitted by investors. Stockbrokers represent individuals or organizations interested in investing in stocks or have already invested in stocks through the financial transaction.
Insights About Stockbrokers
In simple words, a stockbroker is a person who buys and sells stocks, more specifically capital market securities, on behalf of buyers.
How Many Types of Stockbrokers Are There?
Before investing in any stocks through stockbrokers, it is important to know different types of brokers and their functions.
Traditional or Full-time Brokers
In exchange for commission or fees, full-time brokers offer their advice and services based on their expertise. Full-time stockbrokers perform the basic brokerage functions of creating, monitoring, and managing of investment portfolios of their clients, besides full-time stock brokers offer additional services too. Such service includes the following
- Tax advice
- Insurance advice
- Portfolio analysis
- Access to IPO shares
- Helping in financial planning etc.
Discount Brokers
A discount broker is a broker who lets the investors decide the investment strategies and where they will invest. With these types of brokerage, the investors select their desired shares and bonds. Usually, these types of brokers charge less than the full-time broker as they do not provide all the services and tools of investment.
Online Brokers
In this type of stock brokerage, investors can change the position of stock trading through a digital platform; in traditional brokerage, trading takes time as calling and confirming stockbrokers and other formalities make time delay, but in online brokerage, this time gap is minimized.
Jobber
Unlike brokers, jobber purchase securities in their names, and later when a broker need any share, jobbers sell them the required securities.
7 Roles of A Stockbroker
Stockbrokers have similar to other professionals such as bankers, financial analysts, or investors. We have found out the major roles and responsibilities of a stockbroker.
Trader of Stocks
Buying and selling stocks is the primary job of making stock trading on behalf of its clients. Stockbrokers working as an intermediary make purchases and sales of their clients’ stocks; when a client wants to purchase a new stock, a stockbroker makes arrangements for that purchase. And as a part of this duty, stock brokers also maintain the purchase and sales records of their clients.
Researcher & Adviser
Being the most productive investment market stock market comes with a dangerous environment where the market performance of stocks is ever-changing, and investment in the right stock requires professionals’ advice and well-researched market information. Stockbroker provides market information about the best-performing stocks based on their experience and analysis to their clients. It is common now that most stockbrokers are organizations or agencies consisting of many persons. Stockbrokers usually have their market research team and do technical and fundamental analysis along with another form of analysis to provide their clients with up-to-date information and advice about where to invest to achieve investment goals.
Provider of Personalized Services
Along with basic services and functions, stockbrokers provide different personalized services to their clients, and these services include financial planning, insurance planning, retirement planning, tax services, depository service, and many more.
Provider of Margin Financing
Margin trading is a feature offered by some big stock brokerage organizations with full-time broker service. In this feature, investors can buy more stocks than their actual affordability. Margin trading allows for selling or for buying all the stocks a client one in a day. Margin finance will enable clients to borrow money from a stockbroker and use that money to buy more stocks advised by the brokers. Leveraging their positions, clients can borrow money and purchase more stock, and later on, the borrowed money, along with the interest amount, is paid by the clients. And the position is given back to the client when they manage to pay back the margin amount. Although the margin amount may vary, it usually sticks around 50%.
Investment in Other Asset Class
There are four main types of assets classes are available for capital investment; these are
- Cash
- Fixed income securities
- Equities
- Derivatives
Besides, some other important asset class includes real-estate investment and crypto currency investment. Stockbrokers not just help to decide and invest in stocks, they also advise other asset classes and their performances.
Investment Portfolio Manager / Management of Clients’ Portfolios
Portfolio management refers to the management of information of invested assets. To minimize the risk of any stock investment, stockbrokers suggest investing in multiple stocks and other forms of assets. And all the legal process and information from all the investment is managed by stockbrokers on behalf of their clients. (chron.com/role-stock-broke)
Educational Requirement to Become Stockbrokers
Becoming a stockbroker requires getting a bachelor’s degree in the related field, and many brokerage firms also require one additional post-graduation degree called an MBA and two years of experience in any other brokerage firm. This MBA program prepares a person with more in-depth knowledge of finance and introduces mathematics, statistics, and qualitative analysis.
Along with educational requirements, a person may take training and certification to work as a broker. While doing graduation or post-graduation for brokering, the best way for training is an internship.
Another essential document for a stockbroker is the certificate for brokering. Stockbrokers also need to apply for series 63 certification, and this certification also requires a graduation degree. All other academic courses must be completed as well before applying for certification.
How to Get a Stockbroker License?
Steps to get a license includes the following:
- Passing SIE exam
- Getting application from a licensed firm for series 7 exam
- Registration and Passing series 7 exam
- Register and Passing series 63 exam
- And passing additional exams
There are many stockbrokers’ licenses available, among which some are mandatory, and some are obtained to increase competitiveness as a job candidate. And the authority that gives these licenses is the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority of a country. Following are the certifications:
- Series 63 licensure: It is a required license by all stockbrokers, and candidates must apply for it after completing all academic courses of graduation and collecting exam results.
- Series 7 licensure: It is a licensure for those who want to buy and sell individual stocks. And this license requires completion of academic study as well.
- Series 6 licensure: This is a limited investment security license; this license is ideal for package investment for making an investment portfolio in the same investment class.
- Series 3 licensure: It is ideal for those candidates who want to work with commodity futures contracts; It consists of two parts first one is Market knowledge, and another one is Regulatory knowledge.
- Series 65 licensure: It is an ideal license for those stockbrokers candidates who offer financial consultation based on a financial agreement. This financial agreement can be even working fees per hour or a fixed fee as a charge. This licensing covers topics regarding rules and regulation of the financial market and market knowledge of the economies. Along with these licenses a stockbroker must have some skills to be a successful broker. (www.kaplanfinancial.com)
How much Does a Stockbroker Make?
The earning of a stockbroker varies from region to region across the globe, depending on the financial condition. However, in Europe and North America, the average yearly earning of a stockbroker is 66,364 US dollars (Salary.com/research). In the Asia Pacific, the annual average earning is 42880 US dollars. (Comparably.com/salaries) In the middle-eastern region, especially in the UAE, the salary is around 49000 US dollars. (Payscale.com/research)
Conclusion
Stockbrokers are the intermediaries who deal with trading and advising activities in capital market investment. These activities require license and experience while also offering high annual and monthly earnings to a stockbroker. The job of stock brokering pays a decent amount of money compared to other fields of finance.
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