How to buy shares, and why should I buy shares?

[beanhead]

Brokers like PayPay let you buy a YEN amount of a company. Not shares. You pay about 1% for this privilege. Do not use them.

Monex has ワン株 which costs 0.5%, apparently.
No plan to use them, but it does address a real issue. A stock priced at 8,000yen requires 800,000yen as a minimum purchase. That is just nuts.

[TokyoBoglehead]

Brokers like PayPay let you buy a YEN amount of a company. Not shares. You pay about 1% for this privilege. Do not use them.

Monex has ワン株 which costs 0.5%, apparently.
No plan to use them, but it does address a real issue. A stock priced at 8,000yen requires 800,000yen as a minimum purchase. That is just nuts.

The Monex system is not nearly as bad. It is simply a market order for 1 share. Pics attached for reference.

With PayPay, your YEN amount of stock is forever stuck with their exchange.

[mighty58]

I suppose that's exactly my way of thinking. 90% in index funds. Experiment!!! WOW. Do you yourself experiment? and if so what %?
I don't drink, so I was thinking maybe saving that. But it just seems like fools gold then to buy any shares.
Is it some Neanderthal, hunting itch that must be fulfilled. Instead of hunting Mammoths were hunting shares?
Pity we couldn't all arrange summer beer meet up, and talk about this stuff, as most people I know just aren't interested in this stuff.

I buy various individual stocks purely for fun, i.e. just to keep investing interesting. So yeah, maybe it is an itch to pick the winners or something. I do limit it to no more than 5% of the total portfolio though. I own 10 companies, all in sectors that I'm interested in personally.

I find it interesting, however, that when talking to (regular) people about investments, 90%+ of conversations revolve around this 5%, plus perhaps my crypto allocation (also up to 5%). Nobody wants to hear about index investing for some reason

[Bubblegun]

I suppose that's exactly my way of thinking. 90% in index funds. Experiment!!! WOW. Do you yourself experiment? and if so what %?
I don't drink, so I was thinking maybe saving that. But it just seems like fools gold then to buy any shares.
Is it some Neanderthal, hunting itch that must be fulfilled. Instead of hunting Mammoths were hunting shares?
Pity we couldn't all arrange summer beer meet up, and talk about this stuff, as most people I know just aren't interested in this stuff.

I buy various individual stocks purely for fun, i.e. just to keep investing interesting. So yeah, maybe it is an itch to pick the winners or something. I do limit it to no more than 5% of the total portfolio though. I own 10 companies, all in sectors that I'm interested in personally.

I find it interesting, however, that when talking to (regular) people about investments, 90%+ of conversations revolve around this 5%, plus perhaps my crypto allocation (also up to 5%). Nobody wants to hear about index investing for some reason

That's exactly right. Everyone, the news, newspapers, the reporters, seem to talk about that 5% and the darlings or monsters of wall street but non of the boring stuff. I seem to scratch that itch, buy buying a couple of things. But I don't want to do the BUY, and SELL of individual stuff. Ive decided to be slightly boring, but yet daring. ( for me that is). I decided to buy an index fund on the NASDAQ, and another to scratch an itch to save the world for my kids.( A bad investment for cash, probably good my kids and for the planet) but one thing is for sure, ENERGY IS ALWAYS NEEDED. It's a bit like buying shares in ASDA, or WALMART, even in the worst recessions and depression, people need to FOOD. It's boring compared to investing in the next TESLA, TIK TOK, APPLE, SUPER DUPER UBER. I wonder if that's why people think it's all risky. Not to mention Lehmans, the dot com bubble.