investing in stocks and / or shares.....

crazykazoo@hotmail

Hi,

Just wondered if anybody has any tips or suggestions.

I would like to buy some shares in certain companies (not sure which yet) and I wanted to know the best way of going about it.

I don't really have a bundle of cash, but thought that I could start the ball rolling by buying a few shares here and there.

Sorry if I sound like I don't know what i'm talking about - that's probably because I don't :-) Just thought I may get some pointers?

Thanks a lot.

*k*

PS - what is the difference between stocks and shares? As you can tell, i'm a bit of a novice!!

steady__eddie

Greetings,
I am not qualified to offer financial advice so I would not dream of doing so but a piece of homespun philosophy which has proved useful to me until recently is, "If you can't afford to lose it, then don't invest it" Regretfully, Big Food Group proved to be my achilles heel to the tune of £17.5 k so be warned.
As I understand it, stocks are what the Americans call shares. no doubt someone on here will offer a more comprehensive definition.

deemy2004

I would suggest you focus on investment trusts, which spread the risk

See my selection for 2005 and beyond

http://forum.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=Savings;action=display;num=1104956618


The portfolios doing quite nicely and its barely a week on !

Stocks refers to your total ownership of shares
Shares refers to specific ownership in a particular company

I.e. I own stocks in oil companies.
I own 500 shares in Shell.

cheerfulcat

Hi,

Really the first thing you need to do is some reading. There are some very good basic ( free ) courses here -

http://www.incademy.com/pages/home.htm?ginPtrCode=10002

And also at the Motley Fool -

http://www.fool.co.uk/help/sitemap.htm

Check out the discussion boards at the Fool as well, they are very informative.

Thisismoney has some good advice too -

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/help-and-advice/advice-banks/sectionIndex.html?in_advicepage_id=96&in_page_id=90


You might like to read a few books, as well. Alvin Hall's  book, Money for Life, is helpful. So is the Motley Fool UK Investment Guide.

HTH

Cheerfulcat

( submitted too early, hence the edit :-) )