HOW TO BUY SAMSUNG STOCK IN THE USA

Samsung only trades on the Korean stock exchange and their ticker symbols are different from ones you would find on US exchanges. That is why their ticker symbol is probably not familiar to you.

Samsung Stock Ticker Symbol is 005930.KS

What this means is that you cant buy Samsung stock like you would other foreign companies that trade in the US markets and have an ADR. In order to buy stock in Samsung, you need to actually do it on the Korean exchange and to do that you will need a special broker. If that is more trouble than you want to go though, there is an easier way to get exposure to the stock in your portfolio.

Samsung Stock Is In Several ETFs

ETFs are baskets of stock, usually all centered around an industry. For instance you can find ETFs for technology, oil, gold, or just about any other industry you can think of. They have become very popular ways to invest in recent years and the number of ETFs have grown considerably.

The reason for their popularity is that they trade just like individual stocks. You can buy x number of shares of an ETF in the morning and sell it in the afternoon or keep it for ten years. Just like a stock, you can get in and out of them easily which is quite appealing for any investor.

You can buy and sell ETFs if you have an account with most online discount stock brokers. I use E*Trade and you can get 60 days of free trades if you sign up with them. I think they have one of the easiest to understand broker websites that makes buying and selling stocks simple for everyone.

People who want to buy Samsung stock and find that they cant, often turn to two particular ETFs as an alternative. They are ticker symbols EWY and IPK which can easily be bought any time in your online discount stock broker account.

Both of these ETFs have between 20% and 25% of their money in Samsung so you get a decent amount of exposure. EWY is a fund that invests in Korean companies while IPK is different in that it invests in technology companies outside the USA.

While each fund has a similar amount of exposure to Samsung (20%+), the rest of the companies these two fund invest in are different so it is not as good as being able to buy the stock directly. However, for people that dont want to get involved with trying to figure out how to buy stocks on the Korea exchange, buying these two ETFs will provide a decent exposure to Samsung.

Here Are More ETFs That Contain Samsung Stock

EWY and IPK arent the only ETFs that have a high exposure to Samsung. You might also try AAIT which is an Asian information technology fund where Samsung represents about 17%. Another to look at is AXIT which has Samsung at about 14% of the fund.

(Please note that the percentages of Samsung representation in these funds may have changed since the day I wrote this. Please do your own research into each fund BEFORE you buy so that you can better understand exactly what you are investing in)