Cheapest Certificated Share Sale

Essex123

Hi,

A sharesave plan I was a member of has resulted in me receiving a share certificate in a FTSE 100 company worth approx £6000.

I want to sell this as economically as possible, whilst also having control over when I execute the deal (I.e. I want to deal online or on the phone). The reason for this is that the stock is very volatile at the moment, with daily price swings of 5-10% not uncommon. I don't want to put the certificate in a nominee account because this will make the shares unavailable to trade for several days.

The cheapest service I have found at the moment is the Lloyds TSB Certified service online which will charge £27.50.

Can anyone better this trading cost with an alternative broker?

Many thanks
Essex.

SalsaDanca

Do you need to sell the shares quickly? If you can wait a week or two, you could open an online share dealing account, then send them the share certificate and they will transfer the shares into the nominee dealing account. Once the shares are in your account you can sell them whenever you want, and pay the standard online dealing charge.

I've done this with accounts at Halifax Share Dealing and SelfTrade.co.uk before. With both accounts, transferring in the share certificate was free, and selling the shares cost about £12. SelfTrade now charge about £35 per year for a share dealing account, but I don't think you would have to pay any other fees with the Halifax service. Most other brokers should be able to do the same.

Essex123

Hi - I don't need to sell them for the money quickly, however if the price moves in a favourable way (against the currrent trend), then I will want to be able to sell immediately to lock in the profit. I will be looking to do this early next week. I don't really want the shares to be caught in the re-registration process.

To give an idea of the volatility of the stock, the difference between its high and low over the last month is £1.19 with an average price of around £3.00. As I'm looking to trade approx 1900 shares, timing could be material. Therefore full control and getting out of this position ASAP are important to me.

A further complicating factor is that because the ShareSave was exercised early, I will be liable for income tax on the difference between the purchase price the company paid for the shares and my exercise price. The volatility of the share price means I need to be careful to make sure the price I sell at will both cover the income tax liability and give me some extra profit.

sabretoothtigger

A broker can be told to sell only at a certain price. I think the name is limit order, you say only sell at £4 and they will wait until precisely when the stock has that value

I dont think holding the paper is a problem, settlement time is at least 3 days which is enough to post it off afterwards so it must be a question of trust so you need to speak to the broker


Also a trailing stop loss could be set to engage only after a certain price, this would sell if the price was over £4 and lost maybe 1% and the selling point is set by the highest price achieved . Not every broker will do this but the good ones will