Notorious

have been thinking of purchasing some shares recently, do you need alot of cash to get into it? anyone reccomend some good sites, and how easy is it to get yourself set up. Many thanks

Notorious

lol just noticed my title. Should read buying and selling

Chip

www.thisismoney.co.uk

Chip

Chip

Try www.tdwaterhouse.com

Chip

ryn004

bump...
If anyone can reply on this, as I'm interested too!

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Try etrade

Thisismoney is OK

Yahoo Finance is excellent

There are a lot of US sites on trading and day trading

Also www.themarketguys.com has some great tutorials on it which are as relevant here as in the US

And you don't need a lot of cash - with online traders doing trades for £10 you can make money on £500 trades - and you don't want to have more than 20% of your stake in any single stock so try and have around £2500 available altogether.

For longer term deals - stick in what you can afford and leave it for ten years!

Personally I trade the US markets as they are more liquid and seem to have more potential.

Rannoch

imlach

OK, I'll bite....

Usual pearls of wisdom..

1) Always invest using money you don't need.
2) Never put all your eggs in one basket.
3) Worth trying it with "virtual" money first - ie, pick some shares, and follow them "on paper" for 3 months and see how well you do.
4) Be aware that higher gains also means higher risks, and therefore higher losses.
5) Focus on an area, and do some research.
6) Start reading the financial pages and pick up on some of the lingo.
7) See if there are any "share clubs" near you which you can go along to and join in to learn some more lingo and get the feel for it.

Can be interesting, can be fun, can be frustrating, can be financially destructive.

imlach

eg, do you know what any of the following mean....(random selection)

- dividend
- P/E ratio
- EPS
- short
- long
- do you know what the FTSE100 actually is
- base rate
- bid price
- ask price
- market cap

etc etc.
Good book should sort you out on these.

kwaky

I work in this industry, and the advice given above is spot on. It's like going to a casino, be prepared to loose the lot. If you're not willing to make that sacrifice put it into an ISA!

www.investopedia.com

(answers all the questions above)

imlach

You also have to understand how the markets generally work.....ie, let's examine the following scenario.

Company X has been doing really well of late, and the share price has been rising nicely over the last 3 months. Today, they announce a set of results which shows a healthy profit. A beginner might think this is a good time to buy into this company.

Yet, the next day, the share price plummets. Why?

[It takes a bit of learning to understand why this happens. You need to understand P/E ratios, future expectations, analysts expectations, etc]

Spoon

Because we creamers come in on the earlier rise.

Petem95

You can invest in 'tracker' funds which lets experts do the investing, and you just see you investment rise in line with the FTSE 100 or whatever you chose to invest in.

Ive been looking into these trackers myself recently - some have seen fantastic gains recently, and this looks set to continue for some time. With the housing market looking very shaky now, I think a lot of smart investors will be getting out property, and back into shares again.

FTSE rose 16% last year - other stock markets like Germany and Japan saw gains of approx 25% and 40%.

imlach

..and the biggest watched economy in the world, the US Dow saw a decline on the year....(albeit not by much).

On a technical front, some seem to think that we're nearing the end of a mini-bull run (or bounce) which is a technical bounce from the large falls of the early part of this century....and this mini-bull began around 2002. It could be that 2006 sees a small recessionary bear-run....if not 2006, then 2007.

The FTSE100 is at a 4 year high. What goes up, must come down

imlach

You've also got to look at fundamentals.

Record level energy prices, MASSIVE personal debt, stock markets rising fast, and nearing indice highs of recent years, inflation fears....etc etc

Not to say everything will collapse tmmrw, but don't lose sight of the fundamentals.

Petem95

Totally agree, and clearly there will be a correction at some point, but I think where house prices and debt levels have clearly risen to unsustainable levlels and will end in tears - the stock market did crash 5years or so ago, is climbing again, and most economists arent even doubting this wont continue for sometime yet.

Also investing in markets like China clearly have even more potential as levels of growth there are unbelievable.

imlach

.....the same ones that predicted continued growth in 1999 no doubt
Opinion is very mixed.

GCollier

If you want a very readable introduction into the mindsets and methods of top traders, then I would recommend this book - "New Market Wizards".

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...984456-0470235

stevem2k

Slighty OT , but relevant I suppose ....

IG are offering free l2 data on their CFD accounts now. It's not really 'advertised' , you just need to request a l2 trader account and fill in the lse form ( can be faxed back ). No min deposit these days, but you have to fulfil their experience requirements (sensible really as margin based trading isn't right for the first foray into equities)


HTH someone ..

Steve

warrenm2

£7 / trade from Hoodless Brennan, 1st month all deals free - this is the cheapest broker out there. Also have a good read of the beginers stuff at the Motley Fool

Trout

iTrader: (1)

All of the advice given above is excellent...and I would suggest one other thing to think about - be wary of advice given by brokers and investment managers (gets flame suit on!)

Brokers are like estate agents - they make money by making trades. They don't care and in many cases do not know whether a stock is good, bad or indifferent, what they do care about is that you make a trade. Just like estate agents and houses. So when a broker recommends a stock, just remember how estate agent describes a broom cupboard in the middle of J1 of the M1 as a "compact and bijou residence in an excellent location for all major transport networks".

In terms of investment managers, they do know a lot more and are well versed in the fundamentals as described above. However as also said above - opinion is split as to where the truth is. Indeed there are many outside experts have now observed that equity markets have broken away from the more traditional trading cycles and dependency on underlying fundamentals.

This has been driven by new technology, new and increasingly complex and technical trading vehicles such as hedge funds, and finally and most importantly the psychology and appetite of investors that created the 'tech' boom that still overhangs much of the stock values in the marketplace.

Having said all this, investment managers typically trade large sums and so are bound by certain 'market rules' that create massive opportunity for day or momentum traders. With some basic training there are investment opportunities in these areas (check out investopedia, Clearstation, Chuck Mellon, The Market Guys) such as channeling and option trading.

These trades are typically based on technical data rather than 'fundamental data'. Much of this technical data is reported in tools like Clearstation, Telechart (for US stocks and options only) and Yahoo (both US and UK equities).

The reason why small traders can make money this way that big guys cannot is very simple. The big guys create momentum in stocks by say moving funds to a specific sector or to maintain balance in their overall portfolio. The independent trader can 'piggyback' this momentum and get in and out and make a profit.

Large traders cannot do this as they need to maintain their portfolio balance - or if they are really large traders - as they make investments they will 'unbalance' the stock. Basically they will influence the market too much.

Trade stocks with reasonable volume - e.g. over 100k volume per day (available in Yahoo Finance) and your investment of 100 or 200 shares will have little or no impact on the stock momentum.

As a beginner trade as the stock rises. In reality stocks typically fall twice as fast as they rise and once you are experienced you can make more money this way. However the risks as an inexperienced trader are VERY HIGH so learn to trade first.

Paper trading is great for learning how the basics work - however your psychology and ability to be bluntly honest with yourself when paper trading will be sorely tested when it is real money. By all means learn the basics on paper but be prepared for emotional attachment to skew your real trading behaviour.

The basic rules once learning all of the above (in all the posts) is that be prepared to lose a little (you cannot win on every trade) by using 'STOP LOSS' orders which will give you some, but not total, protection of your downside. If you win on three out of every five trades and you return twice as much as you lose on each of these trades your investment will steadily grow.

There are guys I work with you run at 80% of trades making money utilising primarily channel trading which is a momentum trading strategy. One of them lives on a beach in Thailand with a laptop

Do some research, learn the lingo and then have a go with what you can afford to lose.

These are strategies that are working for me - don't trade on any of this - find your own strategies.

Good luck!

Rannoch

Gav

How about the Nikkei??? I've just been getting into this myself and have read in various Financials that it's set to rise considerably this year!! Anyone else heard this???

BTW a great book to read is called Ugly Americans by Ben Mezrich. It's about a group of guy's who raid the Japanese market and make $500 million dollars on a few trades in one day!!!! Obviously thats very broad but its great and inspired me to get into in myself. It's a true story also..

Gav..

2000TLondon

I haven't had time to read all the replies, but one thing I will say (before I read all the replies in the morning) is I see no reason to buy paper shares when you have the spread companies, my favourite of which is www.igindex.co.uk

You can trade a lot more with a lot less and do it all a lot quicker with no fees.

Obviously there is a margin for the spread co / bookie but IMO it's the only way to play!

2000TLondon

An example of why you trade the rumours not the news!