Broker
Also called: investing app, brokerage, platform
The business that buys and sells investments on your behalf — the shop, not the merchandise.
A broker does not sell you investments the way a shop sells you goods it owns. It executes your instruction to buy or sell, and holds the result in an account for you.
The useful distinction is shop versus merchandise. Choosing a broker is choosing where to shop; choosing what to hold is a separate decision, and the more important one.
Once this meant a person in an office who expected a serious amount of money before returning your call. Now it is usually an app, opened in minutes, often with no minimum at all. That is a genuine improvement in access.
It also introduces a conflict worth naming. Many brokers earn more when customers trade often — the house takes a cut of each transaction. A good shop for patient holding can be an expensive casino for frequent flipping, and the interface is frequently designed with the second in mind.
What to check: total cost of holding, whether your assets are protected if the broker fails, and how easy it is to move elsewhere.
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Covered properly in Learn.
This term appears in the glossary of The Quiet Fortune, Volume I.