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How and Where to Buy Tesla Shares Online?

By Stefano Treviso, Updated on: Apr 07 2023.

If you’ve made up your mind and decided that you want to purchase Tesla shares, here are the steps you need to follow:

• Find an online stock broker
• Open a brokerage account
• Add funds to your brokerage account
• Search for Tesla’s stock within your trading platform
• Define your purchase’s entry and exit points
• Place your Tesla shares buy order

Regardless of how simple the previous steps may sound, there are a lot of details to be covered in each one of them, so let’s get started:

Step 1: Finding an online stock broker

Here are the steps you can follow to find a good online stock broker:

• Visit our brokers page or search in Google for stock brokers
• Check their licenses and verify them using the relevant financial regulator’s website
• Search in Google for reviews of the broker that objectively expose their pros and cons (if the review doesn’t mention anything bad, it’s likely that it’s just sponsored content that shouldn’t be trusted)

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The most important aspect to consider when choosing an online stock broker is financial regulation. Regulated brokers must abide by the code of conduct set by the financial regulator of their country. This provides a great layer of protection for investors in the event any disputes occur.

The most well-known financial regulators are:

• SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) - United States
• FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) - United Kingdom

The easiest way to find out if a broker is regulated is: scrolling down to the bottom of their website and reading the small lines of text at the bottom of the page. Regulated brokers will usually display their licenses there. 

After obtaining the license we can go to the relevant financial regulator’s website and search their database to verify if the information is correct.

For investors located in the United States the most common way to expose themselves to the markets is using traditional shares. On the other hand, for European investors the most common way to enter the markets is through CFDs or traditional shares as well.

The type of broker that you choose can also alter the available financial instruments that you’ll use to buy Tesla shares. Some brokers only offer traditional shares, others offer only CFDs and there are those that offer a mixture of both. We’ll make sure to cover all scenarios during our guide.

Step 2: Opening a brokerage account

Regardless of the broker that you choose there are some standard documents required to open a brokerage account:

• A valid proof of identity (ID, Passport, driver’s license, etc)
• A valid proof of residence (any utility bill not older than 6 months and under the account owner’s name)
• A valid funding method under the account holder’s name (debit card, credit card, bank account, paypal account, etc)

Once you’ve got your documents ready you can start the process. 

The first step is entering your email and creating a password.

Depending on the broker you’ll land right at their trading platform where you’ll see a notice to complete your registration, this process involves:

• Providing your personal details
• Answering the investing and trading knowledge questions to make sure that you understand what you’re doing
• Uploading both your proof of identity and proof of address documents.

Once your account is successfully verified, you’ll have the ability to deposit funds.

Step 3: Funding a brokerage account

Every broker has different methods to deposit funds into your account, yet the most common are:

• Credit or debit cards
• Banks transfers
• Electronic wallets (such as paypal, skrill, etc)

Assuming you’re planning to use a smaller amount of funds (anything below $10.000) using credit or debit cards is fine. For bigger transactions it’s recommended to use bank transfers (note that in this case funds take longer to arrive at your brokerage account).

Below you’ll find an example of how the funding process works:

Step 4: Finding Tesla’s stock in your trading platform

For the sake of our tutorial’s simplicity we’ll use two of our favourite brokers to demonstrate how to buy Tesla shares. This doesn’t mean that you’re obliged to use them, you’re free to use any broker that you desire, in the end you’ll find that all the processes we’ll describe below are very similar regardless of which one you choose.

Every stock has something called a “ticker symbol”, it’s a standardized way to identify particular stocks within an exchange using a short code.

The ticker symbol for Tesla is: “TSLA”. 

Right now you’re probably finding it very silly to use a ticker symbol as Tesla is quite a short name, but if the name of the company you were looking for was something like: “Mr. Gordon and Speck incorporated super powerful systems” then we’re sure you’d appreciate having a short universal code to find it in any trading platform.

If you’re using Capital.com’s trading platform, look at the top left corner for the search box and enter the stock ticker for Tesla, right after the stock will appear in the first place of your list. The next step is clicking on the buy button to open the order placement panel.

After clicking on the "buy button" you'll notice how the order placement panel will appear on the right side of your trading platform.

If you’re using eToro’s trading platform, look for the search box at the top center of your screen and enter the stock ticker for Tesla.

Right after you’ll land in a view containing market data for Tesla that looks like this:

The next step is clicking on the blue button that reads “trade” in order to access the order placement panel.

Step 5: Placing your Tesla shares buy order

Here are the steps you need to be able to place your order and buy Tesla shares:

• Choose the type of asset you’ll use (traditional shares or CFDs based on those shares)
• Define your entry price
• Configure your stop-loss order
• Place your buy order

Let’s go in detail through every step:

Choosing the type of asset

As we explained before in the first step of our tutorial, the type of broker that you choose will have an impact on your asset availability and the trading conditions that you’re subject to.

For example in the case of Tesla stock, Capital.com only provides CFDs whereas eToro gives you the option to purchase traditional shares as well, let’s compare both of them to understand which one is more suited for your investment strategy.

Bottom line, CFDs are traded using financial leverage which amplifies your buying power and thus maximizes your risk and profit potential at the same time. The negative sides of CFDs are that they carry a minor daily cost called the overnight fee and that they don’t involve ownership of the asset itself, they’re just a speculative contract.

The decision between using CFDs or buying traditional shares will ultimately boil down to your desired time frame to maintain your trade open and your available capital.

Swing traders which operate on relatively short time frames (weeks to months) generally prefer CFDs whereas passive investors which operate on very long timeframes (years) prefer purchasing traditional shares.

Regardless of which asset type you chose, the next steps will be identical in nearly every broker.

A cool fact to mention about Tesla is that its listed as the #1 choice in Carbon Collective’s Climate Index. The index is a ranking tool created to showcase which companies have put their money where their mouth is by making real efforts to solve climate change. If you're into the green stuff, definitely Tesla and you are aligned.

Define your entry price

There are three ways to buy any share:

• At market price (the current available price) using a market order
• At a lower price than the current price price using a limit order
• At a higher price than the current price using a stop order

In most of the mainstream brokers, you won’t need to select the order type but rather you’ll be presented with two choices:

• Buy or sell now
• Buy when price is (specify price)

If you’re ready to buy your tesla shares at current market price, then you can continue to the next step.

If you’re only looking to buy your Tesla share at a specific price, be sure to use the option called “buy when price is” or "order" (names can vary across brokers). 

Here’s an example of the pending order in Capital.com:

Here’s an example of placing pending order in eToro:

In the order placement panel click on the small dropdown menu located on the top right corner that says "trade".

Then  you'll notice how the whole order placement panel changes and gives you the option to set your pending order.

Configure your stop-loss order

Stop-loss orders are used to limit an investment’s loss when prices go against it, for example: 

You bought 1 Tesla share at $800 and decided to set your stop-loss at $750. 

If the price of a Tesla share reaches $750 a market sell order will be automatically triggered in order to liquidate your position.

Think of stop-losses as a safety precaution for investors that are not constantly looking at their trading platform.

To set a stop loss you can usually define a specific amount of funds you’re willing to lose or you can set a specific price level to be reached.

Here’s an example of setting a stop-loss using Capital.com’s platform:

Here’s an example of setting a stop-loss using eToro’s platform:

Place your Tesla shares buy order

Now that you have successfully chosen your asset, determined your entry price and configured a stop-loss order you’re ready to take the final step, clicking the buy button. In some trading platforms the buy button will display the order type being used regardless if you’re using a market order or  if you’re placing an order at a different price than the current market price.

Here’s an example of placing a market order to buy Tesla shares using eToro’s trading platform:

Here’s an example of placing a market order to buy Tesla shares CFDs using Capital.com’s trading platform:

Congratulations, you’ve bought Tesla shares!