Can I participate in trading Facebook shares on their IPO day from any brokerage?
Any retail equity brokerage will give you access to the NYSE, and thus Facebook shares as they become available.  However, it is important to note that you nor any retail investor will be able to purchase FB at the IPO prices ($33-38 IIRC).  The only people who will be able to buy in at that price are the underwriting investment banks and major investors who have subscribed to the IPO.  You, and all the other retail investors will only be able to buy in as those major investors offer shares on the secondary market.   This being Facebook, there will probably be a significant premium over the IPO price, both due to demand and systemic underpricing of IPOs to encourage the opening 'pop'.   So, if you're intent on buying in at the IPO, pay close attention as the date approaches.  Look at how the recent big IPOs have performed (GRPN, LNKD come to mind).  Know how much you're willing to commit and what price you want.  However, no one is going to know what the opening market price will be come Friday morning.  Be watching your financial data source / analysis of choice and be prepared to make a judgement. Yes. The real question is whether you should. You should consider your investment options, and take into the account that there's much more hype than value in many companies. By definition, an IPO'd stock is publicly traded, and you can buy shares if you wish. There's often an excitement on the first day that doesn't carry over to the next days or weeks.  The opening price may be well above the IPO price, depending on that demand.
Depending on your broker, you can buy these stocks directly at the most liquid local exchanges. For instance, if you are US resident and want to to buy German stocks (like RWE) you can trade these stocks over InteractiveBrokers (or other direct brokers in the US). They offer direct access to German Xetra and other local markets. "This functionality is widely available, not only on brokerage sites, but also financial management and even financial information sites.  For instance, two of the latter are Google Finance and Yahoo Finance.  If you are logged in, they let you create ""portfolios"" listing your stocks and, optionally, the size of your holdings in that stock (which you don't need if you are just ""watching"" a stock).  Then you can visit the site at any time and see the current valuations." Not going to happen for Facebook since there will be too much demand and the order will go to the top clients of the underwriting investment banks.  In general though, if you wanted a piece of a smaller IPO you'd just have to get in touch with a broker whose investment banking department is on the underwriting syndicate (say Merrill Lynch or Smith Barney) since IPOs often have a percentage that they allocate to retail clients (i.e. you) as well as institutional (i.e. hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds etc.). The more in demand the IPO the harder it is to get a piece. Why would a shareholder lend the investor the shares? Some brokers like IB will pay you to lend your shares: http://ibkb.interactivebrokers.com/node/1838 If you buy shares on margin, you don't have much of a choice. Your broker is allowed to lend your shares to short-sellers. There are 2 main types of brokers, full service and online (or discount). Basically the full service can provide you with advice in the form of recommendations on what to buy and sell and when, you call them up when you want to put an order in and the commissions are usually higher. Whilst an online broker usually doesn't provide advice (unless you ask for it at a specified fee), you place your orders online through the brokers website or trading platform and the commissions are usually much lower. The best thing to do when starting off is to go to your country's stock exchange, for example, The ASX in Sydney Australia, and they should have a list of available brokers. Some of the online brokers may have a practice or simulation account you can practice on, and they usually provide good educational material to help you get started. If you went with an online broker and wanted to buy Facebook on the secondary market (that is on the stock exchange after the IPO closes), you would log onto your brokers website or platform and go to the orders section. You would place a new order to buy say 100 Facebook shares at a certain price. You can use a market order, meaning the order will be immediately executed at the current market price and you will own the shares, or a limit price order where you select a price below the current market price and wait for the price to come down and hit your limit price before your order is executed and you get your shares. There are other types of orders available with different brokers which you will learn about when you log onto their website. You also need to be careful that you have the funds available to pay for the share at settlement, which is 3 business days after your order was executed. Some brokers may require you to have the funds deposited into an account which is linked to your trading account with them. To sell your shares you do the same thing, except this time you choose a sell order instead of a buy order. It becomes quite simple once you have done it a couple of times. The best thing is to do some research and get started. Good Luck. Questrade is a Canada based broker offering US stock exchange transactions as well. It says this right on their homepage. ETFs are traded like stocks, so the answer is yes.  Why did you think they only offered funds? "Yes, you could buy a stock on the day of its IPO. I'm a college student, and I wonder if I can buy stock from a company   right after it finishes its IPO? Yes, you can. However, unless you are friends or family of an employee, chances are you'll be paying a higher price than you think as there is generally a fair bit of hype on most  IPOs that allows some people to ""flip them"" which means someone is buying at a higher price. If I am not allowed to buy its stocks immediately after they go on   sell, how long do I have to wait? Generally I'd wait until the hype dies down as if you look at most historical IPOs the stock could be bought cheaper later but that's just my perspective. And also who are allowed to buy the stocks at the first minute they   are on sell? Anyone but keep in mind that while an IPO may be priced at $x, the initial trades may be a few times that value and the stock may come down over time. Facebook could be an example to consider of a company that had an IPO at one price and then came down for a little while on its chart over the past couple of years." Without knowing the specifics it is hard to give you a specific answer, but most likely the answer is no. If they limit the participation in the site to accredited investors, this is probably not something they are doing willingly, but rather imposed by regulators. Acredited investors have access to instruments that don't have the same level of regulatory protection & scrutiny as those offered to the general public, and are defined under Regulation D.  Examples of such securities are 144A Shares, or hedgefunds. "The answer to your question is ""no"". Unless you specifically ask to receive paper share certificates, then brokers will hold your shares with a custodian company in the broker's own nominee account.  If you are able to receive paper certificates, then the registrar of the company whose shares you own will have a record of your name, however this is exceptionally rare these days.  Using a stockbroker means that your shares will be held in the broker's nominee account. A nominee company is a custodian charged with the safekeeping of investors’ securities. It should be a separate entity from the broker itself. In essence, the nominee is the legal owner of the securities, while you retain actual ownership as the beneficiary. Your broker can move and sell the securities on your behalf – and gets to handle all the lovely paperwork – but the assets still belong to you. They can’t be claimed by the broker’s creditors if things get messy. The main reason for this kind of set-up is cost, and this is why brokers are able to offer relatively low dealing costs to their clients. You can, if you wish, ask your broker for an account that deals with paper share certificates. However, few brokers will offer such an account and it will mean that you incur much higher dealing costs and may mean that you cannot sell you shares without first submitting the paper certificates back to your stock broker.   Note that the stock exchange plays no role in recording ownership.  Nor does your broker's account with the clearing house." You can use interactive brokers. It allows you to have a single account to trade stocks and currencies from several countries. "Price is current price per share, but you can buy fractional shares. Minimal investment is how later the first purchase of shares must be to make it worth their efforts to set up the account for you. How you manage it is up to you. You can buy or sell shares at any time, pretty much, though it may take a few days for the transaction to ""settle"" and take effect. You can do this via checks, or you can give the broker (or the investment house, if you are dealing directly with them as I do) permission to take money from or put money to your bank account when you tell them you want to buy or sell shares. You may be able to set up direct deposit; talk to your employer about that. Or you may be able to have your bank make a periodic transfer/purchase for you." A broker does not have to allow the full trading suite the regulations permit.  From brokersXpress: Do you allow equity and index options trading in brokersXpress IRAs?     Yes, we allow trading of equity and index options in IRAs based on the trading level assigned to an investor. Trading in IRAs includes call buying, put buying, cash-secured put writing, spreads, and covered calls.  I understand OptionsXpress.com offers the same level of trading. Disclosure - I have a Schwab account and am limited in what's permitted just as your broker does. The trade you want is no more risky that a limit (buy) order, only someone is paying you to extend that order for a fixed time. The real answer is to ask the broker. If you really want that level of trading, you might want to change to one that permits it. To clarify something: FB did not inflate their share price, Morgan Stanley did.  Every company on the IPO wants a billion dollars a share, but thats not possible so they take what the market will give them, FB played their cards right. MS didn't disclose that their analysts (not auditors) changed their minds.  For fun stuff: read up on ETF arbitrage with HFT, this kinda stuff happens everyday on a micro scale. "My broker (thinkorswim) offers this from the platform's trade tab.  I believe this feature isn't crippled in the PaperMoney version which is effectively a ""free online service.""" Investment banks don't have to buy anything. If they don't think the stock is worth buying - they won't. If they think it is - others on the secondary market will probably think so too. Initial public offering is offering to the public - i.e.: theoretically anyone can participate and purchase stocks. The major investment firms are not buying the stocks for themselves - but for their clients who are participating in this IPO. I, for example, receive email notifications from my brokerage firm each time there's another IPO that they have access to, and I can ask the brokerage to buy stocks from the IPO on my behalf. When that happens - they don't buy the stocks themselves and then sell to me. No, what happens is that I buy a stock, through them, and they charge me a commission for the service. Usually IPO participation commissions are higher than regular trading commissions. Most of the time those who purchase stocks at IPO are institutional investors - i.e.: mutual funds, pension plans, investment banks for their managed accounts, etc. Retail investors would probably not participate in the IPO because of the costs, limited access (not all the brokerage firms have access to all the IPOs), and the uncertainty, and rather purchase the stocks later on a secondary market.