 Hello everyone, this is financial author Amit Dam of Iran Journal. Today, I'll talk about how to buy stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. But first, a small disclosure. I'd like to mention that this video is not a recommendation to buy or sell any investment products or securities and for information purposes only. Before buying any investment products or securities always do your research and seek the help of a qualified professional financial. In my first book, Invest Now, I have discussed in detail how to buy investment products like stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. In this video today, I'll discuss them briefly how to buy these and after watching this video it should have a good understanding of how to purchase investment products. I'll start with mutual funds first because mutual funds are the easiest to buy among stocks and bonds and mutual funds and the process to buy stocks and bonds are very similar but mutual funds are a little bit different. You can buy mutual funds various ways. The easiest way to buy mutual funds would be to buy it from your bank. Some banks have their own mutual fund products and you can easily buy them by going to your local branch or even sometimes you can buy that online. However, keep in mind that when you're buying mutual funds from your bank you'll be able to buy only mutual funds that are manufactured for that financial institution. For example, if you go to TD and buy TD mutual funds you will not be able to buy mutual funds offered by other institutions such as CIBC or Scotiabank with your TD branch where you can buy TD mutual funds. Now the other way to buy mutual funds would be to go to a financial advisor. Now most financial advisors are licensed to sell mutual funds and they can sell you mutual funds across the board from any mutual fund manufacturers. For example, if you go to a financial advisor, he or she will be able to sell mutual funds which could be for example TD mutual funds or CI mutual funds or Fidelity mutual funds. However, keep in mind that financial advisors may charge you a commission to sell mutual funds. The commission can be either up front or sometimes it comes in a deferred sales charge. What it means that you have to stay in that fund for certain years, for example, seven years and if you sell before that time period, then you'll have to pay penalty. The penalty eventually decreases each year and after your time frame, for example, seven years the penalty comes to zero. The other way to buy mutual funds would be to open a discount brokerage account where you can place trade to buy mutual funds either online or by calling a licensed advisor or licensed representative from that discount brokerage to buy mutual funds. If you place your trade online or if you buy mutual funds online, then there's very little commission or even no commission if you buy no sales charge mutual funds or front-end mutual funds. The advantage of buying mutual funds from your discount brokerage is that you have the option to buy any mutual funds from manufactured by any financial institutions. Or even any banks. For example, if you have a TD discount brokerage account, in that account you can buy mutual funds manufactured by CI funds or Fidelity or Dynamic Mutual Funds or TD Mutual Funds or Scotia Bank Mutual Funds. So that's another option. There's another option which is you can go to a full-service brokerage and then you will be assigned a financial advisor who can buy mutual funds for you as well. And there might be charges for buying mutual funds from a full-service brokerage. And there's another way to buy mutual funds which would be from a fee-based financial planner. Now all financial planners are not able to sell you mutual funds in order to sell you a mutual funds. The financial planner or financial advisor has to be licensed to sell mutual funds. Some financial planners, they are licensed to sell mutual funds. So those they can sell you, they can recommend you actually and they can sell you mutual funds at the same time. Some financial planners, they're not able to sell anything to you directly. They'll be able to only advise you what funds to buy based on your scenario. And then you can buy those mutual funds by going to either a licensed financial advisor or discount brokerage or full brokerage. So that's the basic process of mutual funds and how it goes. Now I'll talk about how to buy stocks. The process of buying stocks is a little bit different than mutual funds. Remember I talked about financial advisor who are licensed to sell mutual funds. They can sell you mutual funds and you'll find this type of advisor anywhere from whom you can buy mutual funds. However in order to sell stocks a financial advisor has to be licensed to sell the stocks which is a different category license. So the financial advisors who are able to sell you stocks can sell you as well mutual funds. But if financial advisors are licensed to sell only mutual funds they're not able to sell you stocks. They only sell you mutual funds. So those financial advisors who can sell you stocks basically they can sell you everything. So if you'd like to buy stocks then one way or option is to go to a financial advisor who are licensed to sell stocks and then they can recommend you and sell you stocks. Other option would be to buy stocks from a full service brokerage where you'll be assigned a financial advisor or a planner who are licensed to sell stocks and anything else and they'll be able to execute the stock trades on your behalf once you have an investment account with the full service brokerage. Other option or the easiest option to buy stocks would be to open an investment account with a discount brokerage. For example TD Waterhouse discount brokerage and you'll be able to trade by yourself or buy online stocks through your discount brokerage account. Now if you have a discount brokerage account you can also buy mutual funds online or sometimes if you don't want to buy stocks online then you have the option to call the discount brokerage licensed representatives who are able to buy on your behalf stocks inside your discount brokerage account. But keep in mind that when you're calling them to buy the cost is always more than when you're just basing the trade online by yourself. So that's the basics of how you buy stocks. So you have the option to buy through your discount brokerage account or you can go to a full service brokerage account or you can find financial advisors who are licensed to sell stocks. Now buying bonds. Buying bonds is very similar like buying stocks. You need to have either a full service brokerage account or you need to have a discount brokerage account or even you can find bond advisors or financial planners or bond advisors bond brokers actually who can sell you bonds and you'll be able to purchase through them as well. But again the easiest way would be to buy through your full service brokerage account and the most easiest way would be buy through your discount brokerage account. In terms of buying bonds it works like just like buying stocks on inside your discount brokerage account. You can either place a trade online or you can call your discount brokerage and talk to a license representative who are licensed to sell bonds. Now not all discount service brokerage accounts may offer you to buy bonds online. So there might be some where you can buy online or by calling a live rep or there might be some discount brokerage firms who do not have the option to sell them sell bonds online. So in that case you have to buy bonds by calling the bond the licensed representative at your discount brokerage. The process is same for full service brokerage. You have to call them and they will be able to place the trade or place the bond trade in your full service brokerage account. Now there's another option where let's say you'd like to buy either stocks or even bonds but you don't want to you don't want to buy them directly. So the other option you have you can buy mutual funds or ETFs which are holding stocks and bonds and in that way you have access to the stocks and bonds indirectly through your ETFs or mutual funds and again those ETFs or mutual funds you can buy through your discount brokerage account or through your financial advisor or through your full service brokerage. So instead of going directly buying stocks and bonds you can buy ETFs or mutual funds who are holding stocks and bonds in their portfolio and you have to just do your research or seek qualified financial help to know exactly which one you want and which funds or ETFs are holding those. So that's basically all you need to know how to buy stocks bonds and mutual funds. However if you'd like to know more do your research and visit www.adonchannel.com also my first book Invest Now talks about how to buy investments for the first time and also you can search online and also you can ask your financial advisor or financial planner or discount brokerage representatives how to buy these products. That's all for today. Thank you.