Board lots, order types, and placing your first order

Board lots: why you cannot buy just one share

Shares don't trade one at a time. Every stock has a minimum trade size called a board lot, set by PSE's own board lot table based on the stock's price range. Generally, the higher a stock's price, the smaller its board lot, and the lower the price, the larger the lot. You can't buy or sell a fraction of a board lot through a regular order, only whole multiples of it.

The practical effect surprises people: a cheap stock is not necessarily the cheaper thing to buy. A ₱500 stock with a board lot of 10 costs ₱5,000 for one lot. A ₱0.50 stock with a board lot of 10,000 also costs ₱5,000. The price on the ticker tells you almost nothing about the minimum cheque you need to write, which is why the board lot is the first thing to check once you have picked a company.

Market orders and limit orders

When you place an order, you also choose how it fills. A market order fills right away at whatever price is currently available, trading price certainty for the certainty of getting filled. A limit order only fills at a price you set, or better, which protects you from an unexpectedly bad fill but might not execute at all if the market never reaches your price.

Most broker platforms default to a market order but let you switch to a limit order in the same form. A limit order is generally the safer default for a first-time buyer, since it caps what you actually pay, or sets the least you'll accept on a sale.

Placing the order, step by step

PSEye's prices are delayed or end-of-day, not a live tick-by-tick feed, so check your broker's own quote before an order goes in. Once your account is funded, placing a buy order generally goes like this:

1. Log in to your broker's trading platform, web or mobile, once your account shows as funded.
2. Search for the company by name or ticker symbol.
3. Choose Buy, then enter a quantity in whole board lots.
4. Choose a market or limit order and, for a limit order, the price you're willing to pay.
5. Review the order ticket, ticker, quantity, order type, price, and estimated total including fees, before confirming. This is the moment to double-check you have the right ticker: a mistyped or similarly named symbol is an easy way to buy the wrong company.
6. Submit the order. A market order usually fills within seconds during trading hours; a limit order may sit unfilled until the price is reached or the order expires.
7. Once filled, the trade settles two business days later (T+2), when the shares actually land in your account and show up in your broker's portfolio view.

That last step catches people out. Nothing is wrong if your shares are not visible the same afternoon. Settlement is a fixed two-business-day cycle, so a Thursday trade typically appears on Monday.

Keeping a record of what you bought

Write the trade down somewhere the moment it fills: the stock, the number of shares, the price you paid, the date, and the fee. Your broker shows a running position, but it will not tell you what a stock cost you across several purchases at different prices, and it will not keep the record if you ever move brokers.

PSEye's free PSE portfolio tracker does this without an account. Log each buy and sell and it works out your average cost, what the position is worth now, your gain or loss, and the profit you have actually locked in on anything sold. Everything stays in your own browser, so there is nothing to sign up for. If you would rather practise first, it has a paper trading mode that uses simulated cash against real prices.

Looking up anything you don't recognise

The full PSE investing glossary covers everything else you'll run into on PSEye, in plain English. On the stock pages themselves, any term with a small icon next to iti opens a quick definition without leaving the page.