Is it generally worth buying £100 - £200 worth of shares

sh856531

Hi guys,

I'm kind of interested in playing a little bit with shares - almost as just a bit of fun rather than anything serious. I certainly wouldn't risk thousands of pounds that I couldn't afford to lose.

So just as a little bit of an experiment I was thinking about taking a couple of hundred quid and putting it into one or two of the british banks (they can't really be worth penies can they? :-)

Take RBS - buy at 10p and even if it recovered to 50p you'd still make quite a lot of money. And if it crashes even further - well, it was only a couple of hundred quid.

The thing I was wondering about though was the fact that you seem to have pay £10 when you buy the shares and then £10 when you sell the shares in brokers fees so I'd need to make 10% just to break even.

So I was just wondering if people think that £200 is to small an amount to be bothering with shares?

Many thanks all

S

Blah99

Under normal circumstances, yes, I recommend you invest a minimum of £1000 in any one company and ideally a minimum of £2000. Less than this, when you add in dealing fees and stamp duty, you need the share price to make large gains before you even break even.

However what you're talking about doing is gambling, not investing. So, as you're gambling, you can do whatever you want and hope for the best. You may find this post useful:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1431383

Masomnia

Agree with Blah, you're either going to make assloads or lose it all, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. If you're doing it as a bit of fun and a learning experience rather than a serious investment then go for it. As long as you're aware that you could lose the lot pretty easilly.

sabretoothtigger

Lloyds shares are free to buy right now and halifax does a fiver cost for sales below £250

When the shares vary 20% every day the percentage argument on costs doesnt mean so much

sh856531

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your advice.

With the llyods free share thing, do you have to buy the shares direct from them, or do online brokers offer them for free?

Many thanks

S

sabretoothtigger

Direct from their own dealing company which is the halifax, the commission is free largely because the shares may also one day be free/worthless

duty is still payable but of course every cost is insignificant in the face of absolute loss


The offer lasts till the 31st afaik

pwinky69

Use Halifax Sharebuilder which costs as little as £1.50 per trade. £5 to sell under £250.

zedyy

Dude, £200 sounds okay if you hold onto them long enough. Try to look out for bargains. My father bought 200 shares in British Gas years ago and made a reasonable amount.

sabretoothtigger

British Gas is a utility and had a captive market for a long while. I think centrica was recently a good buy, tons less risk then anything banking though companies have problems with cashflow so its good to check on that

J_Devon

As you pointed out in your first post, as long as you remember that there is a chance that you may lose all of this money, and can take that hit, then experimenting is a good way to find out how the whole share system works.

I'm far from an expert having only started experimenting with them over the last few weeks myself. By I to have purchased £200 of RBS shares. If the money disappears, then so be it. If not, then great, I make a bit of money.

Either way, sometimes you just have to make a mistake to learn from it.

Good luck! Let us know how you get on