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If you want to learn how to buy Akamai Technologies stock, you’re in the right place. This article takes our guide on how to buy stocks and tailors it specifically to Akamai Technologies stock.
Here are the steps to take, in order from first to last:
Set up a Brokerage Account To Buy Akamai Technologies Stock
The term “broker” or “brokerage account” can be confusing to understand at first for many people.
We’re going to keep it simple and help explain it by using an analogy.
When you have money, there are different types of accounts where you can put your money.
If you want to put your money in an account where you can easily access it and write checks or withdraw cash from an ATM, then you typically set up a bank account.
If, on the other hand, you want to put your money in an account that allows you to buy stocks like Akamai Technologies, then you need a brokerage account. It might seem like a foreign term if you’re a beginner, but it’s just the terminology used to describe an account that can buy and sell shares of stock.
There are many brokerage accounts out there that are free to set up. You can choose one from our list of the best stock trading platforms.
We like Tradier. They’re a brokerage that makes it simple to buy Akamai Technologies stock online. We’ll feature Tradier in our tutorial in this guide.
Setting up a brokerage account involves more than just a click or two. It may take some time to go through all the forms, but at least it’s just a one-time deal to complete them.
Put Money in Your New Brokerage Account
After you set up the brokerage account, it’s time to put money in it. You can’t buy Akamai Technologies stock if you don’t have money in the account.
Most brokerages will clarify how to put money in the account right after you open it. Most times, it involves connecting your bank account with your brokerage account to transfer money between them electronically.
It’s worth noting that typically when you make your first deposit into a new brokerage account, it takes about a week for them to let you use that money. So don’t expect that you’ll be able to instantly buy Akamai Technologies stock shares after making the deposit.
Buy Akamai Technologies Stock Using Your Brokerage Account
You’re ready to buy Akamai Technologies stock now that your brokerage account has money. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to buy shares of Akamai Technologies stock using screenshots from the Tradier brokerage account.
First, you need to pull up a ticker symbol for the underlying stock. In Tradier’s platform (which they call Dash), that is done through the Dashboard page as shown here:
The Ticker Symbol for Akamai Technologies is AKAM
Then type in the ticker symbol of the stock you want to buy. For Akamai Technologies, the ticker symbol is AKAM.
In Tradier, after you type in AKAM, it brings up a page that looks like this:
As you can see, it shows all the core information about AKAM stock there, including the current price.
From here, to buy shares of stock for Akamai Technologies, you need to click the green button at the top that says “Trade.”
Doing that takes you to a page that looks like this:
That is where you can enter the details for your Akamai Technologies stock trade. These fields are already auto-populated:
- AKAM (in the Symbol field)
- Equity (refers to stocks, as opposed to options or other assets)
- Buy (as opposed to Sell)
The remaining fields need some explanation:
Quantity
There is an empty Quantity field. That’s where you enter the number of shares of Akamai Technologies stock you want to buy.
You can see at the top right of the above screenshot that the prevailing price of AKAM stock was $88.70. So, each share you buy will cost approximately the amount shown there.
Order Type
The two usual choices here are either Market or Limit.
To explain those, we need to talk about the mechanics of prices in the stock market. For any given asset, there are buyers and sellers.
When someone wants to buy a stock, the price they are willing to pay is referred to as a bid. When someone wants to sell, it’s an offer (or ask).
A transaction occurs when the bid criterion for a buyer matches the ask criterion for a seller.
You can see the highest bid and the lowest ask price for a stock at any given time. These are respectively referred to as “the bid” and “the ask.”
You’ll typically see some distance between the bid and the ask. If the bid and the ask were the same, that would have already resulted in a transaction. Any open orders will not have overlapping bid and ask prices.
If you look again at the screenshot above, you’ll see the bid and the ask indicated there for Akamai Technologies stock. It shows a bid of $86.29 and an ask of $89.25.
That means the highest bidder out there is willing to pay $86.29. And the lowest seller out there is willing to sell for $89.25.
Now let’s look at the two order types: market and limit.
If you submit an order to buy Akamai Technologies stock using a market order, it will match you up with the nearest seller. You don’t indicate a numeric price since “market” means you’ll pay the market price for Akamai Technologies stock. In this case, you would likely pay $89.25 for your shares.
If you buy Akamai Technologies stock using a limit order, you indicate the exact price you are willing to pay. Your order will only get filled if you get that price or lower.
There are tradeoffs with each order type.
With a market order, you ensure you get into Akamai Technologies stock position quickly, but you might make a sacrifice on the price since you’re automatically paying the ask price.
With a limit order, you can try to get a lower price (maybe a price between the bid and ask), but you risk missing the buying opportunity if your order isn’t filled. So limit orders offer less certainty of fulfillment than market orders do.
There is no perfect order type for your Akamai Technologies stock purchase. Ultimately you have to decide for yourself which tradeoffs you prefer.
Time In Force
That is the last field on the Tradier order entry page. You have two choices here:
- Day – Your order will only be active until the current day’s trading session ends.
- GTC – This stands for Good Til Canceled, which means your order will be active until you cancel it.
Once you’ve entered all your preferences, you can click the purple Submit button to submit your order.
The broker will fill your order immediately if you use a market order. If you use a limit order, it may not be filled right away. That’s where your Time In Force choice makes a difference. It affects how long your Akamai Technologies stock order stays open.
Conclusion
Those are the steps to take in order to buy Akamai Technologies stock. You need to have a brokerage account ready and open. Then you need to get to the ordering screen, type in the ticker symbol for Akamai Technologies (AKAM), and make sure the settings are configured to buy the stock at the price you want.
FAQs About Buying Akamai Technologies Stock
Here are some FAQs we’ve heard before about buying Akamai Technologies stock shares:
What Is Akamai Technologies Stock?
Akamai Technologies is a public company. That means that there are no individuals who privately own Akamai Technologies. So it’s not just some guy or gal who single-handedly owns the entire company.
Most small businesses are private companies, and there is a single owner. But for huge companies, many of them are public companies. And for them, the company is owned by the general public.
For companies like Akamai Technologies, anyone can pay to own a piece of the company. A share of stock represents one share of ownership in a public company like Akamai Technologies.
So if you buy a share of Akamai Technologies stock, you are purchasing one share of an ownership stake in Akamai Technologies.
Can I Make Money From Buying Akamai Technologies Stock?
It’s certainly possible, although there is no guarantee that you will make money from buying Akamai Technologies stock. There is risk involved any time you invest in the stock market.
You can check out our guides on how to make money in the stock market and the best stock picking services in order to improve your odds of profitability.
What Does Akamai Technologies Do?
As per Akamai Technologies’s website:
“Akamai Technologies, Inc. provides cloud services for securing, delivering, and optimizing content and business applications over the internet in the United States and internationally. The company offers cloud solutions to keep infrastructure, websites, applications, application programming interfaces, and users safe from various cyberattacks and online threats while enhancing performance. It also provides web and mobile performance solutions to enable dynamic websites and applications, media delivery solutions, including video streaming and video player services, game and software delivery, broadcast operations, authoritative domain name system, resolution, and data and analytics, and edge compute solutions to enable developers to deploy and distribute code at the edge.”
When Was Akamai Technologies Started?
Akamai Technologies was incorporated in 1998.
Where Is Akamai Technologies Located?
Akamai Technologies is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
What Is The Exchange Where Akamai Technologies Stock Is Traded?
Akamai Technologies stock is traded on the NASDAQ exchange.
What Sector Is Akamai Technologies In?
Akamai Technologies is in the Technology sector.
What Industry Is Akamai Technologies In?
Akamai Technologies is in the Software-Infrastructure industry.
