What is a stock, and how does the US stock market work?

1A stock = owning a tiny slice of a company

When you buy 1 share of Apple (AAPL), you own a very small piece of Apple. The share price moves up and down based on what buyers and sellers agree on each day, and it reflects what people expect the company to earn in the future.

2The main US exchanges

Most US stocks trade on the NYSE and Nasdaq. They're open 9:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m. New York time (US Eastern Time), so convert that to your own time zone. For example, in Thailand that's about 8:30 p.m.–3:00 a.m. during US daylight saving time, or 9:30 p.m.–4:00 a.m. in winter.

Every company has a short code called a ticker, e.g. NVDA = Nvidia, MSFT = Microsoft.

3What's an ETF?

An ETF is a fund that trades just like a stock. Buying 1 unit means you hold many stocks at once. For example, SPY holds the 500 large companies in the S&P 500 index, so it's often used as a stand-in for "the market" when comparing performance.

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