If you have nursed the idea of playing right in the heart of the investment world, then this is probably one of the best articles you will read. Here’s an in-depth guide on how to become a stockbroker from home.
Ever wondered why the stock market is such a lucrative one? Well, if you have just like some other folks would have, then you just might agree with me that it is one industry that sure guarantees good returns.
This is especially if the stocks are the very good ones that might likely not crash in the near future. The stock market is filled with professionals who have cut their teeth in the profession and know their onions a whole lot. The question however is; is it possible to be a stockbroker just like these folks without a degree? Well, before delving into answering this very vital question, it just might be needful to know who a stockbroker is.
What is a Stockbroker?
In a brief way, a stockbroker is a professional who works in a brokerage firm or is also a broker-dealer. This person buys and sells stocks and other securities for both retail and institutional clients, through a stock exchange or over the counter, in return for a fee or commission.
A stockbroker is also a financial adviser who counsels individuals and corporations on investment practices and helps them make well-informed investment decisions that fit their abilities and goals. Whether you have for long nursed the ambition to become a stockbroker or you are just considering plying that route, then this post is for you, as it discusses the steps involved in becoming a successful stockbroker.
Is It Possible to Become a Stockbroker Without a Degree?
The truth is that being a college graduate is important to function as a stockbroker. One must go through learning the basics of this profession and that must be through a higher institution of learning. However, a degree might not be necessary when looking to get a stockbroker’s license.
But most firms would definitely want to consider your college degree as a criterion, given how tough and intricate the financial and investment world is.
How Much Do Stockbrokers Make Monthly/Annually?
A Stockbroker makes money either from spread or payments which are known as Commission. The spread is earned if the Broker buys stocks and sells them later at a high price, while the commission is the amount paid as a fee to the Stockbroker by clients for buying and selling stocks on their behalf.
So, the question is: how much does Stockbroker make per annum? The amount depends on the number of clients the Stockbroker has on his client list. But, on average a Stockbroker can make about $120,000 per annum; there are some big brokerage firms that make over $1,000,000 every year.
In addition to all these, you must bear in mind that there is money to be made in this line of career but you have got to work your butts off to carve a niche for your self, especially in the early months and years of your career; but once you are able to stand out as a good Stockbroker, people will come to you to manage their stock portfolios.
13 Steps to Become a Stockbroker from Home Without a Degree
1. Read up All You Can
Although it is possible that you become a stockbroker without a degree, it is very important that you stay really abreast with the industry you are about to delve into. What this means is that you should read up all that you possibly can about being a stockbroker.
This includes; who a stockbroker is; their duties and other very important traits. Doing this would be tantamount to you preparing yourself ahead for what you are delving into.
2. Be Great With Numbers
If you are such a person who dreads mathematics, then you might not be able to pull through in this profession. For this reason, it becomes very needful that you sharpen your math skills. This is so that you know how to deal with figures as you encounter it in your daily operations as a stockbroker.
3. Be Detailed
If you have ever been around any stockbroker, then you would agree that they are very detailed people. This is because the daily activities of a stockbroker require that they pay close attention to details and information they come across. For you to therefore pull through as one, you must be ready to sharpen your skills in this area so as to appear as a professional.
4. Get a relevant degree
In the past, knowing how to invest and get good returns was all you needed to become a stockbroker, and having a college degree was like mere icing on the cake. Not so anymore! To become a stockbroker in today’s competitive market, you need to get a relevant university or college degree.
Examples of fields to get your degree in include accounting, banking/finance, mathematics/statistics, economics, business administration/management, and so on. However, you must bear in mind that the college or university you attend can also determine your prospects as a stockbroker—but it doesn’t make much of a difference in most cases, provided you’re good at what you do.
Make sure to keep your grades up. Even if the college you attended doesn’t matter much, your grades do. The better your grades, the more opportunities you will gain access to.
In addition, you should consider taking up internship positions at reputable brokerage companies, especially if you are not planning to get an MBA later on. If you cannot find a brokerage company, hit up your campus “investment club” or start one if it doesn’t exist yet.
After your college years, you should consider having an MBA. Although this is not really necessary, but it can help you rise quickly to the cream of the crop.
5. Join a Club
If you are yet to get a degree and you are in the university, you may want to consider joining a business-related fraternity or campus club. There is a whole lot to be learned and garnered here as such; organizations provide excellent networking opportunities that can lead to internships or entry-level paid positions with local brokerage firms.
Therefore it is very important that you take a cue from this if you are yet to bag a degree and are really wishing to become a stockbroker sometime soon.
6. Improve yourself
There’s a lot more to becoming a stockbroker than bagging the required degree. You can make yourself even much better than the average degree holder by learning more about the business on your own. Read books on investing. Watch financial news shows.
And attend conferences and seminars where you will get to meet with and learn from investment gurus. If your weakness is being able to tag along with other people, then you might have a bit of a challenge here. This is because possessing great people skills is one of the criteria for nailing it as a stockbroker.
For this reason, if you lack these skills, you must be ready to develop and groom them to be a professional. Having this skill means that you must be a very strong customer advocate and you must be able to communicate detailed information in a clear manner that can be easily grasped.
7. Start your own investment portfolio
The best way to have a practical understanding of how things work in the stock market is to start your own investment portfolio. Start investing your own money. Better yet, tell ask your parents or relatives to make a “small” investment that you can help them manage.
If you can manage your own money, or that of your parents very well; then chances are that you will manage other people’s money well, too. With an investment portfolio, you can convince potential clients that you’re really good at investing for good profits.
8. Define your services
As a stockbroker, you can choose from three career options. Firstly, you can be a full-service broker, working with a brokerage firm. You can only succeed here if you are sales-oriented and have solid marketing and communication skills because you will be responsible for finding your own clients.
Most brokerage firms will set you up with a space, give you the essential training, and place you on a salary to start off until you pass their trials, after which you will be paid commissions based on the number of clients you attract.
Secondly, you can be a discount broker. This option is for you if you are more service-oriented. You will be assisting clients with buying and selling stocks, but you will not be giving advice, though you are required to know a little bit about everything (rollovers, stock options, margin accounting, derivatives, bond ladders, etc).
As a discount broker, you will earn fewer commissions and will generally always be on salary. Thirdly, you can be a bank broker, working at a bank and helping bank customers buy fixed annuities and make other choices.
9. Decide on which type of firm to work with
After defining what type of stockbroker you want to be, you need to decide on which firms you want to apply to. Would you like to work with a big firm or a small one? By working for a big firm, you will get a competitive training package, helping you build a strong foundation and alleviate your financial start-up problems.
But you may feel like your commissions and other benefits might be reduced because there are too many people around. By working for a small firm, on the other hand, you will get all the attention you want and feel more personable. And while the commissions may be higher, you may not be able to get a solid training package to start with.
10. Get trained at a firm
Before you can be a full-fledged stockbroker, you will need to get a few months’ on-the-job training with a type of firm you would like to work with. This is called pre-training.
11. Write necessary exams
To operate as a professional Stockbroker in any State, you have to get the Stockbroker’s license and before you are issued the license, you have to fulfill some criteria which include; taking some Stock exchange related courses in College and sitting for the Stockbroker’s license exams which are known Series 7, Series 63 or Series 66 exams.
These exams vary by state or country. In the U.S., you will be required to write the Series 7 tests given by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). If you are in the U.K., however, there are no series of exams, but you will need to obtain certain certifications instead. If you are neither in the U.S. nor in the U.K., you need to find out what obtains in your own state or country.
12. Get a Sponsorship
Getting sponsorship is very imperative as this helps a great deal in bolstering your CV. This means that you are advised to be sponsored by a broker and complete at least the duration of four months of brokerage employment. In most cases when starting out you may have to start on a volunteer level.
So a non-paying internship might just be it for now. This however doesn’t matter because you are being prepared with in-house classes that prepare you for your licensing exams, as well as real on-the-job experience.
13. Kick-start your career
Having completed all the necessary steps, you can apply to work with a firm of your choice, and start your career as a qualified stockbroker.
7 Duties of a Stockbroker
Before going into the details of the duties of a Stockbroker, let’s review the major roles a Stockbroker play in a transaction. These roles are so very important that it requires you to be very conversant with them. So, here below are the roles of a stockbroker.
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A Stockbroker Acts As A Principal
What does acting as a principal mean; you just might ask? It simply means that the Stockbroker buys the stock at a lower price and sells it at a higher price to stock investors in the stock market. The Stockbroker makes his money from Spread, which is the difference between the price he bought the stock and the price he sells to investors.
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A Stockbroker Acts As An Agent
This means that a Stockbroker buys and sells stocks for others for a fee. Thereby, serving as an intermediary or better put an agent. This is one important role that has to be mastered so as to make a huge success in the industry.
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Scout for New Clients
If the stockbroker is working in a brokering firm, or as an independent stockbroker, one of his lines of duties would be to scout for new clients who are ready to invest in the stock and securities market. That involves printing and sharing business cards, attending a business meeting, telemarketing, and having good sales skills, to convince more people to use your services as a Stockbroker. Remember, that the more clients you have in your portfolio, the more money you make as a Stockbroker.
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Manage Clients Accounts
Another major duty of a Stockbroker is to manage clients accounts; this includes trade executions on behalf of your clients. Acting in the capacity of an agent to buy and sell stocks via electronic platform or on the trading floor, with permission from his Clients.
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Advisory Role
The Stockbroker also has an advisory role to play to his clients; that involves keeping your clients up to date with happenings in the stock market and other related financial markets. Also, giving them advice on the best stocks to buy and sell to maximize their profits.
Some see this as the major role of the Stockbroker because if you are not good at giving your clients good advice that will earn them more money, they will likely not want to pitch up with your services for a long while, and that means low commissions and less money for you. To properly exercise his advisory role, a Stockbroker is meant to stay up to date with financial news, and tax laws and be able to carry out extensive research that will help him forecast the stocks better.
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Fair Dealing
In line with the provisions of the bodies that guide the Securities and Stock market, such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a duty is imposed on Stockbrokers to treat their clients and that includes that the Stockbroker should maintain an honest standard in all dealings with clients.
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Duty to Disclose
A Stockbroker owes a duty to his clients to disclosure all the vital information as regards an investment they recommended; he should disclose the possible profits involved in investing in any particular stock and also the risk engaged in such investments, without exaggerating or giving a false statement that will mislead the clients in making a good choice of investment.
If a Stockbroker fails to perform his duty of full disclosure to any of his clients, and the client suffers a major financial loss, the client can bring an action against the Stockbroker, and the court will award him some damages.
10 Traits of Successful Stockbrokers
Being a stockbroker sure does guarantee the benefit of a good-paying career, good quality of living, as well as a very successful career. However, what you didn’t know might be that these flourishing stockbrokers work really hard to make sure that they stay afloat in the industry. That is why the quality of growth they make is amazing.
For this reason, a successful broker must have put a whole lot of things in place so as to maintain a particular radar of success. So, just what are the traits of a successful stockbroker you just might want to know? You shall know in a bit, however, it is needful to know who a stockbroker really is.
A stockbroker in a concise manner is defined as one who works for a brokerage organization, buying and selling stocks on the stock market. Now let us look into the features of a successful stockbroker. Please note that these results are such that happened over time as hard work and consistency were present.
a. A college Degree Holder
No layman goes into the stockbroking business without first getting a good degree at the university. A successful broker has to be one so as to stay at the top of the game and be competitive. Economics, finance, mathematics, accounting, or business management amongst others are areas where degrees are bagged. Whilst, there are colleges that are more highly rated than the others, it is needful to know that the very successful ones are categorized based on the caliber of schools they have attended.
b. They Have MBAs
The industry is such a competitive one, and so for this reason the very successful ones can be shifted from those who are not when an MBA is obtained. This is because they have been exposed to better and higher learning experiences than the average stockbroker who didn’t attend an MBA school has. The bottom line is these kinds of brokers are taken more seriously than those who do not.
c. They Are Very Exposed Readers
If you have ever heard the saying that goes; ‘readers are leaders’ then you may then be able to agree with this third point. Because the position of a stockbroker isn’t a mediocre one, this is why the very successful ones are those who read voraciously as well as follow financial news and are more knowledgeable than those who aren’t. To these set of people, see reading as leisure. Therefore, when stockbroker A is watching football as leisure, the successful one might see reading financial books as leisure as they garner a whole lot of information.
d. They Manage Their Own Investment Portfolio
You are considered a successful stockbroker when you are proven worthy of having managed well an investment portfolio. This is one very great trait that successful brokers have. They are held in high esteem because they have a good track record of what they have managed really well.
e. They are Sales oriented
Being a successful stockbroker means that you are sales-oriented. No one can successfully boast of having done well in the stock industry without first converting people to clients. Therefore the sales skills are to a large extent needed here. The successful ones have scaled through these hurdles and so are termed successful folks.
f. They Have Good Training
Those who have blossomed in the stock industry are those who have undergone great training. This training to a huge extent help with shaping the skills as well as broadening the horizon so that they may be able to attract more clients as time goes on.
g. Mandatory Exams
A broker would be known as successful when he or she must have taken all the mandatory exams needed. This is one sure way to separate the boys from the men. This however depends on the country you may be located in. Whilst, for some these exams, are in two diets, in others they may be more than two, however, the bottom line is that these exams must be taken to be seen as an authority in this field.
h. Tested and Trusted
There are various testing modes in different countries. This means how one might be tested in the UK might be a whole lot different from how others may be tested. Therefore, a successful stockbroker is one that has been tested by the appropriate bodies and has been certified fit and able to grow on the ladder.
i. Take Continuous Education Courses
A broker is not qualified to be called a success if he or she doesn’t continuously undergo education. This means that there must always be the zeal to learn more things. Those who already are successful do not joke with this at all and that is why they have continued to rise up the zenith of their careers.
j. They are Hard Workers
Being a successful stockbroker means that you must be a hard worker and this is exactly what the successful ones do. They work smart and hard to make sure that they continue to grow and reach the plateau within record time. These are just a few of the traits successful stockbrokers are known of. You too may consider taking a cue by taking the steps they took to reach the apogee of their career.