Members area
  • Login
  • Register
Home
Articles
Stock

How To Buy Disney (DIS) Stock In 2023

Buy Stocks Now

Your capital is at risk. Other fees apply.

By Wajeeh Khan
Last Updated April 7th 2023
16 Min Read

In this guide, we will provide you with a comprehensive guide on how to buy Disney stock in 2023. We will outline the step-by-step process of buying Disney stock before breaking it down and explaining each of the steps involved in detail.

We will introduce you to the two best Disney share brokers and tell you what to look for when vetting online trading platforms. We will also tell you everything you need to know about the animation film production company turned multinational media and entertainment industry giant. The guide will explore its financials and historical price performance and outline factors affecting its price action.

By the end of this guide, you will have learned where to buy DIS shares and the factors influencing their share price. But even more importantly, we will help you determine if Disney is worth investing in 2023.

How To Buy Disney (DIS) Stock – Overview

Disney stock is currently listed with multiple online trading platforms. Here is the near-standard share investing process that you need to use when buying Disney via most of these brokerages.

  • Step 1: Create a share trader account – Register a share investor account with your preferred broker. In this case, most brokers will only seek to capture your basic personal information, like your name and contact information. Some Others may want to know about your trading experience and source of income.
  • Step 2: Verify your identity – Seeing that you are registering with a regulated broker, you will need to verify your identity. This involves submitting a copy of your driver's license or passport.
  • Step 3: Deposit funds – Once the account has been approved, log in, and deposit cash therein. Different brokers support different payment options and ask for varying minimum deposit minimums.
  • Step 4: Buy Disney (DIS) shares – After the cash reflects in your trader account, choose to buy shares and find Disney from the list of supported stocks. Customize the trade by indicating the amount of cash you wish to spend on that trade or the number of DIS shares you wish to buy.

 

buy Disney stock

Your capital is at risk. Other fees apply.

Below, we break down this process and explain it in detail. We will tell you everything you need to know about the Walt Disney Company. But even more importantly, we will detail the company's past, current, and projected share price performance.

The Disney (DIS) Stock Buying Guide - Reviewed

Step 1: Decide Where To Buy Disney (DIS) Stock

Your choice of the best place to buy Disney shares should align with your investing goals and preferred strategy. But there currently are hundreds – possibly thousands of online brokerages – that have the perfect feature to accommodate your investing strategy. How, then, do you find the best place to buy DIS shares?

Well, here are a few factors that you should consider when vetting online stock brokerages:

  • Cost of trading: Identify all the fees and charges imposed by your preferred broker. These include broker commissions, spreads, payment processing fees, swap fees, and any other trading/non-trading fees. Assess the impact all of these have on your trades and only register with a brokerage that offers the most affordable charges.
  • Account minimums: Check the minimum initial deposit and trade minimums required by the broker. Confirm whether they support fractional trading and only register with a broker whose required minimums you can afford.
  • Regulation and reputation: Only register with a licensed and highly regulated broker. Additionally, they should have a solid reputation for stellar customer service, reliability, and efficiency.
  • User-friendliness: The best Disney share broker should also be user-friendly. Confirm this by checking what their current and past clients have said about the broker's onboarding process and the navigability/user-friendliness of their trading interface on online review platforms.
  • Supported tools: It is also important that the broker integrates both expert- and beginner-friendly features and tools into their platform. These include a free demo account with sufficient virtual funds and educational material, as well as premium trading, analysis, and risk management tools.

To help you get started with Disney stock investing, our analysts have vetted tens of multi-regulated and highly reputable trading platforms. Ultimately, we settled on the following two as the best Disney share brokers in 2023.

eToro – Best Disney Stock Broker for Affordability and Copy/Social Trading

eToro has been around for 15 years, during which time it onboarded 25+ million traders from all over the world. More than 600,000 of these follow the Disney stock on the multi-regulated broker's trading platform. Through the beaker, they get to check the stock's price action and access updated Disney news and analysis.

We especially liked eToro because of its user-friendliness. It not only runs a straightforward account opening process but also operates a highly navigable trading interface. This integrates a wide range of educational content and demo account to help beginners, as well as premium trading and analytics tools for pro traders.

Additionally, eToro is a commission-free broker that supports fractional share ownership. And to start buying Disney shares on the brokerage, you only need to register a trader account and deposit at least $10. It supports a wide range of payment processors – including bank cards and PayPal. Though it doesn't charge a deposit processing fee, it charges a withdrawal fee of $5 – and the minimum you can draw is set at $30.

how to buy disney stocks

We also liked that eToro integrates copy and social trading. Through the broker's social trading platform, beginner and expert traders get to interact with each other, share ideas, and collaborate on research or strategy formulation.

Copy trading, on the other hand, makes it possible for every eToro platform user to earn passively. It allows anyone to copy trade settings of highly popular investors and replicate them in their account – and you only need an account balance of at least $200 to start copy trading. Popular traders – whose trade settings are copied by the community – are also given a commission by eToro, based on the value of assets under copy.

buy Disney stock

Your capital is at risk. Other fees apply.

Webull – Best Zero Commission Broker

Webull is an American-based share brokerage best known for its affordability and support for the widest range of shares. In addition to Disney stock, for example, you get to interact with 5000+ other shares – mostly American companies and international ADRs. In comparison, eToro only supports slightly over 3000 local and international shares.

Webull is also a commission-free broker, implying that you only have to pay spreads when trading Disney stock on its platform. Further, Webull supports fractional share ownership and will let you start buying Disney shares for as little as $5. Plus, the online broker doesn't even have a minimum initial deposit limit.

We must also mention that the broker supports two primary payment processing options – ACH Checks and bank deposits. ACH deposits and withdrawals are free, but bank deposits and withdrawals attract $8 and $25 processing fees – respectively.

Other factors that make Webull stand out as one of the best places to buy Disney shares include its support for long-term investing. It achieves this by allowing for the creation of tax-advanced IRA accounts through its platform. If you wish to go long-term on Disney stock while keeping trading costs and capital gains taxes low, consider investing in Disney via this IRA account.

Step 2: Research Disney (DIS) Company And Stock

Before hitting the buy/sell order for the Disney shares on any trading platform, learn as much as possible about the factors influencing DIS stock price action. Learn if they have a positive or negative impact on the stock's price. And you get to understand these factors by looking at how the company works and how its price has performed in the past.

buy Disney stock

What is Disney? 

Disney, also known as the Walt Disney Company, is a US-based mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was started by Walter Elias Disney in October 1923 in Los Angeles, California. Walter and his Disney Company soon morphed into a revolutionary animation company after pioneering several revolutionary developments in the film industry – including synchronized audio. 

The company found major success with animated films like Mickey Mouse, Silly Symphonies, and Steamboat Willy. By the 1940s, it started diversifying into comic books, live-action movies like Song of the South, and nature documentaries like True Life Adventures.

Walt Disney also ventured into music production with the launch of the Walt Disney Music Company. The company would experience meteoric growth throughout the 1950s, starting with the launch of Disneyland Park – Los Angeles opened, followed closely by the largest Disneyland theme park – to date – in Orlando, Florida.

Today, the company has extended its reach into multiple other mass media and entertainment businesses. These include the launch of the Disney Channel in April 1983. In the last three decades, the company has also embarked on an aggressive acquisition campaign.

During this time, it acquired the following media and entertainment companies:

  • Pixar, Lucas Film, Marvel Studios, 20th Century Studios, and Searchlight Pictures - all in the film and theatrical enterprises division.
  • ABC Television Network, FX Networks, and 73% of National Geographic - in the Television business.
  • ESPN and ESPN+ in the sports programming business.

In total, Disney has acquired close to 30 businesses (wholly or gaining a controlling stake) across both its two lines of business, i.e., Digital Media & Entertainment, as well as Disney Parks, Experiences & Products. 

We must also observe that right from pioneering synchronized sound, one of Disney's key drivers has been its innovativeness and competitiveness. Most recently, the company launched the Disney Plus digital streaming platform as it seeks to remain relevant in the ever-changing entertainment sphere.

Disney Financials

Disney has consistently recorded revenue gains for more than a decade. In 2010, for example, Disney's annual revenues stood at $38 Billion. It broke past $50 Billion in 2015 and sustained this uptrending revenue gain until 2019, when it reached $69 Billion. 2020 would, however, prove catastrophic to the brand and a major turning point.

For the first time in decades, Disney's annual revenues dipped by $4 Billion to $65 Billion. Much of this could be attributed to the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic and government-imposed measures that saw social gatherings banned. This meant the closure of Disney World theme parks across the world and the postponement of movie releases.

In reaction to the revenue dent, the company paused dividend payments – for the first time in over 40 years. According to the company CEO, the company would, henceforth, concentrate on reinvesting and expanding the mass media and entertainment empire – starting with the popularization of the Disney Plus digital streaming service introduced in 2019.

In the 12 months to September 2022, Disney had grossed over $82 Billion in revenues – a 22.7% increase on the year-over-year scale.

This gave the company a P/E ratio of 26.82, which falls within the industry average and is indicative of the considerable level of optimism investors have on DIS stock.

The entertainment company also has a quick ratio of 1 – implying that it can comfortably pay off all its liabilities within a short period of time. This goes to show that Disney has rather solid financial footing and will comfortably weather the looming economic recession.

Disney Historical Price Performance

In the early 1940s, Disney stock started trading over the counter. It wasn't until November 1957 that DIS shares were availed to the general public. It was listed with the New York Stock Exchange, with one DIS stock fetching $13 at the IPO.

Since then, Disney stock has undergone eight stock splits. During the first four, i.e., 1956, 1967, 1971, and 1973, DIS was subject to a 2-t0-1 split. Twice – in 1986 and 1982 – Disney underwent a 4-to-1 stock split, with a further 3-to-1 split taking place in July 1998. The most recent 1000-to-1014 stock split took effect in June 2007.

In all, the original DIS stock bought before 1956 has been split into 779 equal shares. This implies that if you had invested in one DIS stock at the time, this investment would have been appreciated and reached $74,000 (based on Disney stock's average price of $95 throughout the last quarter of 2022).

Historically, Disney has maintained an overall uptrending price action. For example, 10 years ago – in mid-2012 – DIS shares broke above $50 for the first time ever. Three years later – by the first quarter of 2015 – it had rallied 200% to break above $100 before rallying by a further 200% to reach its current all-time high of $201 in March 2021.

Today, however, Disney stock price has shed more than 55% of this peak, with as much as 40% of this having been lost in 2022. The company's management had earlier warned of poor performance in 2022, some level of stabilization in 2023, and possible recovery starting in 2024.

Much of this is attributed to the losses being posted by the likes of Disney Plus and gloomy economic forecasts. The company's future is, however, promising, as evidenced by the growing subscriber base for its premium digital streaming services like Disney+, HULU+, and ESPN+.

Factors Affecting Disney Share Prices

It is evident that Disney has a massively promising future and that its share prices will soon rebound and resume their pre-2022 uptrend. But before you hit that 'BUY' button, you need to familiarize yourself with the factors that have the most impact on DIS stock prices and understand how they influence your trade decisions and profitability.

Here are a few: 

  • Revenue growth: In the periods leading up to 2020, Disney was highly attractive because it was both a growth and dividend stock. Now that it has stopped distributing dividends, investors are monitoring its revenue growth more keenly, with negative projections threatening a crash in stock prices.
  • Growth projections: Disney stopped paying dividends to concentrate on expanding its media and entertainment empire. The acquisition of strategic mass media and entertainment brands could even be attributed to its price rally in the years leading to 2020. You can expect future smart acquisitions and product launches to have a near-similar impact on the DIS stock price.
  • Macro factors: A looming recession, rising cost of living, political tensions across the world, and the threat of another pandemic will also have a direct impact on DIS stock prices.
  • Competition: Disney faces stiff competition from massively popular and beloved brands like Netflix and Prime Video in the digital streaming business and CNBC and CNN in the mass media front. Subscriber and viewer gains for competitors will often reflect poorly on Disney's growth and affect DIS's stock price negatively.

buy Disney stock

Your capital is at risk. Other fees apply.

Step 3: Open A Share Investor Account And Buy Disney Stock

Now that you know what to watch out for when buying and selling Disney shares, it now is time to go over the DIS stock buying process in detail.

For illustration purposes, we will teach you how to buy DIS shares from the all-popular eToro online brokerage.

1. Open a stock broker account 

Open the official eToro website on your browser or download the eToro mobile trading app. Hit the "Join Now" icon and complete the user registration form that pops up. This captures your basic personal information, income sources, and trading experience. You will also need to create a password for this account.

open trading account

2. Verify your identity

Every regulated online broker – including eToro – will demand that you verify your identity. Simply submit a copy of your identification document, like your national ID, passport, or driver's license.

etoro account verification

3. Deposit funds

The broker will send you an email notification informing you the account has been approved. Log in and hit the "Deposit Funds" button. On the funding tab that pops up, choose one of the supported payment methods and follow the prompts to fund this account.

fund account

3. Buy Disney stock

Once the funds reflect in your account, hit the "Discover" button to see the supported assets. Click on "Stocks," and from the list of supported shares, choose to buy Disney.

A trading tab will pop up. Use it to customize the trade by indicating how much you wish to spend on the trade or the number of DIS shares you intend to buy. Execute this buy order by hitting the "Open Trade" button. 

buy disney stock

buy Disney stock

Your capital is at risk. Other fees apply.

Disney (DIS) Stock Strengths And Weaknesses

Are Disney shares worth buying in 2023? Or should you let them sit on a stock watchlist for a little while longer? These are two fundamental questions every stock investor must ask themselves before hitting the buy button on an online stock brokerage.

To help you answer this, we discuss some of the reasons you should consider buying DIS stock today and a few more why you should not buy Disney stock today.

Reasons to Buy Disney Stock

  • Resilient stock price: Disney shares have already proven their resilience. The company has survived some of the worst economic meltdowns and maintained an uptrending price action. It is, therefore, expected to survive its current share price woes and possibly resume its 2021 highs – which would translate to 200% gains on your income.
  • Competitive advantage: Disney is one of the oldest and most popular mass media and entertainment brands. This goodwill gives the company a competitive advantage which has seen such product launches as Disney Plus acquire a massive subscriber base in a relatively short period of time. In the two years Disney+ has been around, for example, it has grown its number of subscribers to 164 Million. In comparison, Netflix – which has been around for more than 10 years – has a subscriber base of $223 million.
  • Strong financials: Different financial metrics, including the P/E ratio, EPS, and quick ratio, indicate that Disney has a rather solid financial footing. This, plus its proven resilience, has the investment community convinced that the Walt Disney Company will survive the looming economic recession.
  • Promising future: You may also consider investing in Disney because it has a hugely promising future. Its share price is expected to rebound while the media and entertainment empire is expected to continue expanding.

Reasons Not to Buy Disney Stock

  • Looming recession: The majority of economists across the globe are convinced the world economy is staring at a recession. This would mean a stock market crash and a further price drop for DIS stock – which means today may not be the best time to start buying Disney shares.
  • Expected poor performance: Disney management had warned investors of weak growth projections in 2022 and expects this poor revenue streak to persist in 2023. This implies that today may not be the best time to start buying Disney shares – especially for short-term traders.

For more guides on how to buy shares check out our other stock buying guides:

buy stocks

Your capital is at risk. Other fees apply.

Conclusion - How To Buy Disney Stock

Disney is a large-cap industry share company. After the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the mass media and entertainment giant sought to re-engineer its future by doubling down on its transition to the digital world. This will be achieved through the popularization of such brands as Disney+, HULU+, and ESPN+.

This push has, however, taken a toll on the company revenues that effectively caused the ongoing DIS stock price crash. The general feeling within the investment community, nevertheless, is that Disney stock will eventually rebound and possibly recapture its early 2021 peak price.

eToro – Buy Disney (DIS) Stock Today

Buy Disney Stock

Your capital is at risk. Other fees apply.

Read More:

FAQs About How To Buy Disney Stock

How can I buy Disney stock today?

Start by creating a share investor account with a regulated and highly reputable stock brokerage like eToro. Deposit funds into this account and choose to buy DIS shares.

Does Disney pay dividends?

No, Disney doesn't distribute dividends to shareholders. Note, however, that the company had consistently paid dividends for more than four decades. It only paused the practice in 2021 and redirected its profits towards expanding this media and entertainment empire.

Where can I buy Disney shares today?

Disney is a massively popular stock that is currently listed with virtually all the most popular online share brokerages, including eToro and Webull.

How much do I need to start investing in Disney shares?

Most online brokerages support fractional share trading. eToro will, for example, let you invest in DIS with as little as $10, while Webull lets you start investing with $5.

Is Disney stock a good buy?

Yes, Disney stock is still a good buy even though it has lost more than 50% of its peak price. The majority of analysts are convinced that the company revenues and DIS stock will eventually rebound and race to new heights in or after 2024.

Will Disney's stock price go up in 2023?

It is unlikely that Disney stock prices will go up in 2023. For starters, Disney's CFO has already warned of weak growth as the likes of Disney+ continue finding their place in the digital streaming space. A looming economic recession also makes it unlikely for DIS stock to rise again.