GTA 5 Stock market investment guide and Lester assassinations

GTA 5 Money works the same as it always has on the surface, but the GTA 5 stock market, coming in the form of the very maturely named BAWSAQ and LCN markets, has added a big shakeup to the best GTA 5 money making methods.

If you're after some fast cash, you're in the right place. Below we'll explain how to make money fast in story mode, specifically by using Lester's stock market assassination missions in particular, which are by far the best way to make Trevor, Michael and Franklin's lives (and more importantly your story playthrough) a little easier, and probably a lot more fun.

This page doesn't tackle multiplayer though - but if you're on the hunt for more GTA 5 pages like this, then our GTA 5 cheats guide is the place you'll want to go - do note, though, that there's no official money cheat in GTA 5. Anyone who says there is is telling porkies.

On this page:

• How to make GTA 5 money fast using the Stock Market and Lester Assassination Missions
• LCN stock market explained
• BAWSAQ stock market explained

How to make GTA 5 money fast using the Stock Market and Lester Assassination Missions

If you want to make some serious money in GTA 5, one of the best things you can do is master the game's stock markets. Just like the real world markets though, you'll struggle to make money out of these systems until you have a fair bit of money to throw at them. The good news is that you'll accrue a pretty impressive amount of cash just by playing through (and completing) the game's main story, and generally playing it smart.

How Lester Assassination Missions work with the Stock Market

There's one specific method - the stock market assassinations - that guarantees you an enormous amount of money when done properly - in fact, do it right and you're likely to hit the actual hard cap of how much you can own in-game, which is around GTA$2,147,483,647.

You'll reach a point in GTA 5's story, right after Trevor moves to the city, where Franklin is able to access a series of missions from Lester, all of which are based around the assassination of prominent corporation characters. By happy coincidence, each corporation has a competitive counterpart on the stock market, and the good or bad fortunes of one company are directly reflected in the fortunes of the other.

As you might imagine, this means you can exploit mission circumstances for your own advantage. You'll have no choice but to complete the first of Lester's missions - The Hotel Assassination - in order to progress the rest of the story, but after that you should not complete any others until you've finished the main campaign and saved up a massive wedge of cash (we won't spoil how much it is but... it's a lot).

You should then invest all of this money into the stock market as you work through Lester's missions, one by one, so that you can gain the highest possible rewards from your corporate interference.

You can of course stare at the list of companies on the market and reverse-engineer this for yourself, but we've created a cheat sheet for you below. Before you dive in though, there are a few other things to bear in mind. Here's the methodology step by step.

How to use Stock Market Assassinations to make money in GTA 5:

1. Invest all of your money (on all three characters) into the company listed below in the 'Investment Before' column, right after you accept the mission from Lester.
2. Complete the assassination.
3. Wait until the stock reaches its peak price, listed in the 'Sell at return of' column below (this percentage return is listed on the 'Portfolio' page of the market on the in-game browser). The LCN and BAWSAQ take different amounts of time to reach their peaks.
• LCN - Peaks one in-game 'business day', or 24 in-game hours after the assassination, starting to decline shortly after that.
• BAWSAQ - Peaks immediately after the mission is complete, and starts to decline after around 24 in-game hours.
4. Once your stock peaks, sell all of your stock on all three characters and then immediately invest it all again into the company listed in the 'Investment After' column below.
5. Sell those stocks when it hits the 'Sell at return of' number listed next to it, like you did before, but note that the time it takes for the crashed stock to bounce back and hit that maximum percentage differs again:
• LCN - Bounces back to peak around five or six days after the assassination, declining to average shortly after.
• BAWSAQ - Bounces back to peak around two days after the assassination, again declining to average soon after.

This method also manually saves the game, and we recommend you create a new save slot each time you do it. That way, if you get a bit greedy and miss a stock's peak, you can always reload the previous save 12 hours earlier. Once you've moved on to a new assassination, you can obviously save over the saves from the previous one to avoid them stacking up!

Finally, remember to complete the game's main story before beginning the Multi-Target Assassination and those after it! If you don't, you'll miss out on quite literally billions of dollars that there's no other way to make at anywhere near this speed or reliability.

GTA 5 Stock Market and Assassinations list

When you've finished working your way through all of Lester's missions, and grabbed all of that lovely lolly, you should have a fortune to either invest back into the stock market (for some reason), or use to snap up every vehicle, business and building available in the game world.

A word of caution if you choose the former approach. If you decide to pour your ill-gotten gains back into the stock market, understand that there are no further guarantees when it comes to the return on your investments. If you decide to put your money into bricks and mortar instead you'll make less cash overall, but your money's much safer. We can still help you do a little better than this, however, so read on...

Making money on the LCN stock market explained

The LCN stock market exists only in the single-player component of GTA 5, and we've got a few useful tips that will help you both minimise your risks, and get more back from your investments. It won't surprise you to learn that buying low and selling high lies at the core of your money-making strategy here, but there are certain things you should keep in mind about how exactly shares behave in the game.

First things first, make sure you have a decent amount of time to commit to each round of investment. Shares take approximately 45 seconds to update, and available gains are often only available within a very narrow window of opportunity. It's true enough that shares that tank disastrously will recover in time, but you won't be able to make use of your capital while it's tied up in poorly performing stocks.

Something else to keep in mind is that each LCN corporation on the market has a direct competitor. As one company suffers, the other gains, and vice versa. Here's a quick cheat-sheet that will help you keep track of who's fighting who within the game's economy.

LCN corporate rivals

How then to make the most of this system? It depends first of all on how averse you are to risk, as well as the unique market fluctuations within your own game. To help you manage this delicate balance of risk and reward, it's essential that you learn to carefully study the performance graphs provided for each stock.

If a stock's performance has historically followed a gentle curve with a clear pattern associated with it, you can buy low, exercise whatever patience is required to turn a profit, and then get out when you feel confident the peak price has been reached. You won't get huge returns from using this strategy, but you should be able to make a tidy sum of money if you can identify several such stocks and play them simultaneously. Just be careful not to get too greedy, as even the most stable stocks can suffer a drastic drop from time to time.

It's easy to capitalise on Lester's stock market shenanigans, but you're always at risk of losing the money you invest in this much less predictable sandbox market. Always try to keep a broad portfolio of stocks in play to both maximise your profits and minimise your risks, and don't leave it too long to get out of a market. Keep enough of your money churning in the system, however, and you should find it easy to make far more than you lose from less fortunate investments.

GTA Online After Hours Gameplay Trailer - Nightclubs on PS4, Xbox One, PC

Watch on YouTube

Making money on the BAWSAQ stock market explained

The BAWSAQ market is still available in GTA 5, however it's no longer available as part of GTA Online. Rockstar Games Social club partially closed down in 2025, but some of its primary functions (including checking your character stats) are still available on the main Rockstar website. Unfortunately, you cannot monitor community activity and price information on the former Social Club now.

Now, we mention this because previously the BAWSAQ market value was determined by the actions and investments of every other player connected to the Social Club, meaning you really had to stay on your toes. At the time of writing, we believe that BAWSAQ could still be operating based on in-game player actions and investments while connected to the Internet, though we are working to confirm this information.

Here's an example of a BAWSAQ investment previously outlined by Rockstar. When the game released, it made sense to put your money into Ammu-Nation as soon as possible. Everyone getting stuck into the campaign at launch was collectively buying a massive amount of ammunition, driving the corporation's stock up as a result. The actions of the entire player base had a profound impact on the stock's performance.

This wide-ranging meta makes it possible to achieve a much bigger return on your investment than if you only played with the offline markets. You should be able to get a return on your canny investments that's at least three times higher than those achieved on the LCN market, but the window of opportunity to capitalise on your money can be much smaller. The risks, of course, are much greater.

However, if you need to make some money while you're waiting for your Stocks to ripen, there are other options. Most are less lucrative, but they can fill your pockets quickly. You can raid Weed Farms to steal their earnings, steal from the armored money truck that pops up randomly, find collectibles, complete side missions and of course take part in heists or robberies.

That's all for now. We hope you earn a lot of GTA$ from the Stock Market - good luck!