Best Trading Platform For Buying Apple Shares
Buying Apple shares?… A share trading platform is a great way to do this!
We will show you what trading platforms you should look at to buy Apple shares…
- Why use a trading platform to buy or trade Apple shares? »
- How to buy Apple shares using a platform? »
How to buy Apple shares using a trading platform
Our view: The next generation of online trading platform means you can get setup & buy Apple shares in as little as 10 minutes!
- Select a share platform
- Open your share account – To do this, you will need your bank details and national insurance number
- Fund your account – You will need to fund your a/c with a debit or credit card or bank transfer
- Search for the share using the Apple stock code – Type in the stock code APPL into the search box
- Check out the latest info and price for Apple – Some platforms offer free research and analysis
- Buy Apple shares – Nice and easy!
Share Trading Apps Comparison
| Trading Platforms: | Features:* | Go To Site: |
 | DEGIRO are one of largest and cheapest brokers in Europe. Access to over 50 markets in 30 countries. Low commissions/fees. User-friendly, simple platform. Investing involves risk of loss. | See Deal » |
 | Interactive Investor are the UK's #1 flat fee platform. Over 350,000 customers. Capital at risk. | See Deal » |
 | AJ Bell offers overseas trading in 24 international markets. Capital at risk. | See Deal » |
 | IG Trade & invest with the world's leading online trading provider.** Trade over 17,000 markets with spread bets and CFDs and invest in thousands of global shares & ETFs. Spread bets and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how spread bets and CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. Capital at risk. | See Deal » |
 | SAXO Access over 30,000+ stocks across 60+ exchanges worldwide. Ultra competitive pricing. Benefit from extensive charting with 50+ technical indicators, integrated Trade Signals and innovative risk management tools. Investing involves risk of loss. | See Deal » |
 | Hargreaves Lansdown The UK's #1 broker. Price improvement service helps you get the best price for your shares. Capital at risk. | See Deal » |
*Please note that additional fees may be applied by platform/App providers for their services. ** No 1 For CFDs and spread betting, based on revenue excluding FX (published financial statements, October 2021).
Why use a trading platform to buy or trade Apple shares?
You don’t have to buy Apple shares using a trading platform.
You could go down the old-school route using a stockbroker directly to buy for you.
This can involve lots of paperwork and waiting for the postman to send you paper statements, which may be perfectly adequate for some people.
Your preference may be to deal with a real person to make things happen – whilst this can work, it can be slow, cumbersome, and potentially more expensive.
The good news is that with technological advances, investors now have a significant choice when buying shares abroad.
Benefits of using a trading platform include:
- Lower trading costs
- Easy access to the UK and global share market
- 24/7 access to your investments
- You can hold all your tax-efficient investments, such as ISAs and SIPPs, in one place: including lifetime ISAs, right to buy ISAs and Junior ISAs
- Plus, any other fund holdings or shares that you’re trading outside of a tax-free environment from a general trading account
How do you pick a trading platform?
Trading platform services offered vary widely, and so do the costs.
5 things to think about:
1. Do you want to invest or trade Apple shares?
There are 2 ways to buy and sell stocks online
You can invest in stocks directly via a share dealing service or speculate on share prices using leveraged trading products.
a. Investing in shares
Share dealing services enables you to invest in company shares to sell them for a profit at a later date. When you buy shares, you become a part-owner of that Company and gain shareholder rights, including any income paid as dividends.
Different share-dealing services have other charging structures. Some platforms offer commission-free share dealing, but most operate on a fixed fee per trade, with usually a reduction in this fee if you carry out more than a certain number of monthly transactions.
With profits you make on share trading, capital gains and dividends earned may be subject to tax at your rate. Taxation can be mitigated by trading within an ISA or Self Invested Personal Pension account.
b. Shares Trading
With derivatives trading, you can use CFDs and spread bets to speculate on a share’s price increasing or decreasing without taking direct ownership of the shares themselves.
CFDs (Contracts For Difference) and spread betting are leveraged products, which means you can gain total exposure to company shares while only putting down a small deposit. While this magnifies possible profits, it does the same for losses.
CFDs & spread bets are popular among short-term traders as profits and losses are realised immediately – making it faster to open and close trades. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t use them for longer-term positions too. You’d need to consider the costs involved in maintaining a position – such as overnight funding – and the bet duration, as spread bets do have fixed terms.
They enable you to buy and sell shares online without owning the underlying asset. This has tax benefits and means you can trade both rising and falling markets (Tax laws are subject to change).
2. Do you want to do a lot of trading?
Active investors will want to look for a platform that offers the lowest fees for volume trades.
If you are going to trade Apple stock regularly, most share trading platforms will offer lower prices based on volume.
3. Types of trading account
Some trading platforms offer general trading accounts, ISA accounts and Self-Invested Personal Pension Accounts, which offer tax-free trading benefits (no tax on dividends or capital gains tax on realised profit).
Trader accounts which offer ISA and SIPP accounts include Interactive Investor, AJ Bell, Hargreaves Lansdown and IG
4. Do you want to trade just in shares, funds, or shares & funds?
Some platforms don’t offer collective funds.
If you are also interested in investing or trading in funds, this may determine who you go with.
If you are interested in ETFs, Investment Trusts, Open Ended Investment Companies (OEICs) or Unit Trusts, you must check with the platform provider what is available. E.g. Some platforms only offer a limited number of collectives, such as OEICs.
Charging structure for funds held on the platform will vary. Over time, the impact of such charges can be significant. Check the platform charging structure carefully.
5. How easy is this trading platform: what kind of tools and customer service does it offer?
How easy is the platform to use to buy and sell shares?
Platform functionality is becoming the key battleground in persuading traders which platform to go for. Mobile app features are also vital in offering traders alerts and buy/sell signals whilst on the move.
These are often the criteria that count most highly with users, so research and read the reviews.
Many investors are prepared to pay more fees for a platform that offers valuable apps and services.
A brief history of Apple
Founded in 1976, Apple is now one of the largest Companies in the world by capitalisation, along with Google (Alphabet), Microsoft, Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway.
Being one of the first big players in the PC and mobile technology spaces, their trademark operating systems have a loyal fanbase dating back decades, who trust the technology and want to stick to what they know – despite not being spoilt for choice with product ranges in comparison to non-apple technology.
However, the Company has been shifting towards rebranding itself as a ‘Services’ company, despite its reliance on its hardware products at the current time.
Hargreaves Lansdown reports that the services side of the business “makes money from charging subscriptions for various services and gets fees from app developers to use the App store”
Service margins are higher, and revenues should be more reliable – all being well will take the pressure off the group to deliver constantly rising hardware sales in the future”.
Whether the company warrants being the most valuable Company in the world by market capitalisation is debatable, but its latest results certainly make a strong case for it.
IMPORTANT:
No news, feature article or comment should be seen as a personal investment recommendation. Before deciding to invest, you should ensure that you are familiar with the risks associated with a particular plan. If you are unsure of the suitability of a specific product, both in respect of its objectives and risk profile, you should seek independent financial advice.
The value of shares, ETFs and ETCs, bought through a share dealing account, stocks and shares ISA, or a SIPP can fall and rise, which could mean getting back less than you originally put in. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Spread bets and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Between 67%-78% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs. You should consider whether you understand how spread bets and CFDs work and whether you can afford to risk losing your money. Professional clients can lose more than they deposit. All trading involves risk.
The tax treatment of ISAs depends on your circumstances and is based on current law, which may be subject to change in the future. ISA transfer charges may apply; please check with your provider.
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