Can I buy stocks directly from a public company?
"As far as I know, the answer to this is generally ""no.""  The closest thing would be to identify the stock transfer company representing the company that you want to hold and buy through them. (I have held this way, but I don't know if it's available on all stocks.)  This eliminates the broker, but there's still a ""middle man"" in the transfer company. Note this section from the Stock transfer agent Wikipedia article: A public company usually only designates one company to transfer its stock. Stock transfer agents also run annual meetings as inspector of elections, proxy voting, and special meetings of shareholders. They are considered the official keeper of the corporate shareholder records. The decision to have a single transfer company is a practical one, ensuring that there is one entity responsible for recording this data - Hence even if you could buy stock ""directly"" from the company that you want to own, it would likely still get routed through the transfer company for recording." This is allowed somewhat infrequently.  You can often purchase stocks through DRIPs which might have little or no commission.  For example Duke Energy (DUK) runs their plan internally, so you are buying from them directly.  There is no setup fee, or reinvestment fee.  There is a fee to sell. Other companies might have someone else manage the DRIP but might subsidize some transaction costs giving you low cost to invest.  Often DRIPs charge relatively large amounts to sell and they are not very nimble if trading is what you are after. You can also go to work for a company, and often they allow you to buy stock from them at a discount (around 15% discount is common). You can use a discount broker as well.  TradeKing, which is not the lowest cost broker, allows buys and sells at 4.95 per trade.  If trading 100 shares that is similar in cost to the DUK DRIP. Yes, you often can buy stocks directly from the company at little or no transaction cost.  Many companies have either a Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRIP) or a Direct Stock Plan (DSP).  With these plans, you purchase shares directly from the company (although, often there is a third party transfer agent that handles the transaction), and the stock is issued in your name.  This differs from purchasing stock from a broker, where the stock normally remains in the name of the broker. Generally, in order to begin participating in a DRIP, you need to already be a registered stockholder.  This means that you need to purchase your first share of stock outside of the DRIP, and get it in your name.  After that, you can register with the DRIP and purchase additional shares directly from the company.  If the company has a DSP, you can begin purchasing shares directly without first being a stockholder. With the advent of discount brokers, DRIPs do not save as much money for regular investors as they once did.  However, they can still sometimes save money for someone who wants to purchase shares on a regular basis over even a discount broker. If you are interested in DRIPs and DSPs and want to learn more, there is an informative website at dripinvesting.org that has lots of information on which DRIPs are available and how to get started. If the company has a direct reinvestment plan or DRIP that they operate in house or contract out to a financial company to administer, yes. There can still be transaction fees, and none of these I know of offer real time trading.  Your trade price will typically be defined in the plan as the opening or closing price on the trade date.  Sometimes these plans offer odd lot sales at a recent running average price which could provide a hundred dollar or so arbitrage opportunity.
Well, Taking a short position directly in real estate is impossible because it's not a fungible asset, so the only way to do it is to trade in its derivatives - Investment Fund Stock, indexes and commodities correlated to the real estate market (for example, materials related to construction).    It's hard to find those because real estate funds usually don't issue securities and rely on investment made directly with them. Another factor should be that those who actually do have issued securities aren't usually popular enough for dealers and Market Makers to invest in it, who make it possible to take a short position in exchange for some spread. So what you can do is, you can go through all the existing real estate funds and find out if any of them has a broker that let's you short it, in other words which one of them has securities in the financial market you can buy or sell. One other option is looking for real estate/property derivatives, like this particular example. Personally, I would try to computationally find other securities that may in some way correlate with the real estate market, even if they look a bit far fetched to be related like commodities and stock from companies in construction and real estate management, etc. and trade those because these have in most of the cases more liquidity. Hope this answers your question! The answer to this question is related to another question: How would I invest in Uber? Given that Uber is a privately-held company, the average investor cannot directly buy stock.  However, there are some indirect methods that you can use to invest in Uber, and as a result, it is also possible to indirectly short Uber. One method is to invest in (or short) companies that invest in Uber.  Alphabet/Google (GOOG) owns some, as well as Microsoft (MSFT), Toyota (ADR), and other companies.  Theoretically, you could short these companies, as a hit to Uber would be bad for those companies. Another method would be to look at Uber's competitors.  Think about what companies would do well if Uber went under.  Lyft, perhaps, although it is so similar to Uber that if one has trouble, the other may as well.  Perhaps instead you might invest in a traditional taxi company, or a company that provides services to taxi companies, such as Medallion Financial Corporation (MFIN). Keep in mind that either investing or shorting any of these is not really the same as investing/shorting Uber.  It provides you some exposure in Uber, but your investment is also affected by many other things that have nothing to do with Uber. For more information, see the Investopedia article Ways to Invest in Uber before It Goes Public. For the record, I don't recommend that you do any of this. "First, you mentioned your brother-in-law has ""$100,000 in stock options (fully vested)"". Do you mean his exercise cost would be $100,000, i.e. what he'd need to pay to buy the shares? If so, then what might be the estimated value of the shares acquired? Options having vested doesn't necessarily mean they possess value, merely that they may be exercised. Or did you mean the estimated intrinsic value of those options (estimated value less exercise cost) is $100,000? Speaking from my own experience, I'd like to address just the first part of your question: Have you treated this as you would a serious investment in any other company? That is, have you or your brother-in-law reviewed the company's financial statements for the last few years? Other than hearing from people with a vested interest (quite literally!) to pump up the stock with talk around the office, how do you know the company is: BTW, as an option holder only, your brother-in-law's rights to financial information may be limited. Will the company share these details anyway? Or, if he exercised at least one option to become a bona-fide shareholder, I believe he'd have rights to request the financial statements – but company bylaws vary, and different jurisdictions say different things about what can be restricted. Beyond the financial statements, here are some more things to consider: The worst-case risk you'd need to accept is zero liquidity and complete loss: If there's no eventual buy-out or IPO, the shares may (effectively) be worthless. Even if there is a private market, willing buyers may quickly dry up if company fortunes decline. Contrast this to public stock markets, where there's usually an opportunity to witness deterioration, exit at a loss, and preserve some capital. Of course, with great risk may come great reward. Do your own due diligence and convince yourself through a rigorous analysis — not hopes & dreams — that the investment might be worth the risk." "A ""market maker"" is someone that is contractually bound, by the exchange, to provide both bid and ask prices for a given volume (e.g. 5000 shares). A single market maker usually covers many stocks, and a single stock is usually covered by many market makers. The NYSE has ""specialists"" that are market makers that also performed a few other roles in the management of trading for a stock, and usually a single issue on the NYSE is covered by only one market maker.  Market makers are often middlemen between brokers (ignoring stuff like dark pools, and the fact that brokers will often trade stocks internally among their own clients before going to the exchange).  Historically, the market makers gave up buy/sell discretion in exchange for being the ""go-to guys"" for anyone wanting to trade in that stock. When you told your broker to buy a stock for you, he didn't hook you up with another retail investor; he went to the market maker. Market makers would also sometimes find investors willing to step in when more liquidity was needed for a security. They were like other floor traders; they hung out on the exchange floors and interacted with traders to buy and sell stocks. Traders came to them when they wanted to buy one of the specialist's issues. There was no public order book; just ticker tape and a quote. It was up to the market maker to maintain that order book.  Since they are effectively forbidden from being one-sided traders in a security, their profit comes from the bid-ask spread. Being the counter-party to almost every trade, they'd make profit from always selling above where they were buying. (Except when the price moved quickly -- the downside to this arrangement.) ""The spread goes to the market maker"" is just stating that the profit implicit in the spread gets consumed by the market maker. With the switch to ECNs, the role of the market maker has changed. For example, ForEx trading firms tend to act as market makers to their customers. On ECNs, the invisible, anonymous guy at the other end of most trades is often a market maker, still performing his traditional role. Yet brokers can interact directly with each other now, rather than relying on the market maker's book. With modern online investing and public order books, retail investors might even be trading directly with each other. Market makers are still out there; in part, they perform a service sold by an Exchange to the companies that choose to be listed on that exchange. That service has changed to helping tamp volatility during normal high-volatility periods (such as at open and close)." "Something to note is that when a company announces a share buyback program there is usually a time frame and amount of shares that are important details as it isn't like the company will make one big buy back of stock generally.  Rather it may take months or even years as noted in the Wikipedia article about share repurchases. Wikipedia covers some of the technical details here but to give a specific set of answers: When a company announces a share buyback program, who do they actually   buy back the shares from?  From the Wikipedia link: ""Under US corporate law there are five primary methods of stock repurchase: open market, private negotiations, repurchase 'put' rights, and two variants of self-tender repurchase: a fixed price tender offer and a Dutch auction."" Thus, there are open market and a couple of other possibilities. Openly traded shares on a stock exchange?  Possibly, though there are other options. Is there a fixed price that   they buy back at? Sometimes.  I'd think a ""fixed price tender offer"" would imply a fixed price though the open market way may take various prices. If I own shares in that company, can I get them to buy back my shares? Selective Buy-Backs is noted in Wikipedia as: ""In broad terms, a selective buy-back is one in which identical offers are not made to every shareholder, for example, if offers are made to only some of the shareholders in the company. In the US, no special shareholder approval of a selective buy-back is required. In the UK, the scheme must first be approved by all shareholders, or by a special resolution (requiring a 75% majority) of the members in which no vote is cast by selling shareholders or their associates. Selling shareholders may not vote in favor of a special resolution to approve a selective buy-back. The notice to shareholders convening the meeting to vote on a selective buy-back must include a statement setting out all material information that is relevant to the proposal, although it is not necessary for the company to provide information already disclosed to the shareholders, if that would be unreasonable."" Thus it is possible, though how probable is another question. While not in the question, something to consider is how the buybacks can be done as a result of offsetting the dilution of employees who have stock options that may exercise them and spread the earnings over more shares, but this is more on understanding the employee stock option scenario that various big companies use when it comes to giving employees an incentive to help the stock price." yes, there does need to be demand. on heavily traded stocks, there is no reason to be concerned. on thinly traded equities, you will want to check the market depth before placing a sell.  the company is likely not the one that is buying your shares on the open market. "(Note: out of my depth here, but in case this helps...) While not a direct answer to your question, I'll point out that in the inverse situation - a U.S. investor who wants to buy individual stocks of companies headquartered outside US - you would buy ADRs, which are $-denominated ""wrapper"" stocks.  They can be listed with one or multiple brokerages. One alternative I'd offer the person in my example would be, ""Are you really sure you want to directly buy individual stocks?""  One less targeted approach available in the US is to buy ETFs targeted for a given country (or region).   Maybe there's something similar there in Asia that would eliminate the (somewhat) higher fees associated with trading foreign stocks." If you want to invest in the Windows Phone, then you go and find out who makes the Windows Phone i.e. Microsoft. Then you go and decide if Windows Phone is successful will the share price of Microsoft go up (own research/deduction) and if you think that the price of Microsoft has a positive correlation with the Windows Phone, then you could buy shares of Microsoft. There is no way to invest directly in individual products on stock exchanges, you are generally investing in the companies that produce them. You find the ticker of a company by googling. NASDAQ: MSFT