Cheap trading sites (execution only) and advice?

PaulB75

Hi.

I already have an ISA with Hargreaves Landsdown where I am invested in various funds plus BP shares, so I have a little experience with that side of things.

What I`m looking to do now is to experiment with trading a little. I don`t have lots to invest initally : I`d like to put in a few hundred £ initially and see how it goes, so I`ll be trading in low volumes but may put in a little more each month or in future.

With this in mind, can anyone recommend a cheap site for trading.

Also, as I don`t have experience in this, if anyone has any advice I`d welcome it. For example, hints and tips, tax advice (does the trading site automatically calculate CGT etc)?

Thanks in advance.

Paul

Friar_2

Im happy with The Share Centre (share.com).

1%/trade (£7.50 minimum) or 0.5% for regular investing (£1 minimum). What I did was invest £765 or so in a few different places and then set up a couple of £202 standing orders (dont forget stamp duty of 0.5% per buy). If you have more to invest in the future they have a trader option which is £20+VAT per quarter and all trades no matter the amount are done for £7.50.

They also offer free telephone advice (although cant say I have used it) plus background info, written sector advice and broker picks on all shares.

Kohoutek

x-o.co.uk is one of the cheapest (£5.95 flat rate/trade). You can only buy on UK markets.

I wouldn't worry about CGT if you're only going to trading a few hundred pounds. The annual tax free limit for capital gains is £10,100, so you'd have to get extremely lucky with your stock picks to be liable for any CGT!

PaulB75

Kohoutek wrote: »

x-o.co.uk is one of the cheapest (£5.95 flat rate/trade). You can only buy on UK markets.

I wouldn't worry about CGT if you're only going to trading a few hundred pounds. The annual tax free limit for capital gains is £10,100, so you'd have to get extremely lucky with your stock picks to be liable for any CGT!

Thanks for the advice so far. I have some stock options from work which are likely to use up my CGT allowance.

Are there any sites where you can get discounted trades in return for funding say £100 every month or something? I guess a £6 fee for trading say £100 worth of shares is going to make this unprofitable....

psychic_teabag

SVS is slightly cheaper than x-o but doesn't have an ISA - not sure if OP needed that. I think SVS do a discount if you do lots of trading.

Another option is a portfolio builder (halifax or iii I think, perhaps motley fool), which is £1.50 to buy, but then around £10 to sell. But that limits you to buying on a small number of days per month, so not good for short-term trading. For a single buy/sell cycle, works out at round about the same as SVS or x-o, but you have the option to buy several times before one big sell. Obviously works out worse if you want to do multiple partial sells to tap off profit on the way up.

hbakhshi

Kohoutek wrote: »

x-o.co.uk is one of the cheapest (£5.95 flat rate/trade). You can only buy on UK markets.

I wouldn't worry about CGT if you're only going to trading a few hundred pounds. The annual tax free limit for capital gains is £10,100, so you'd have to get extremely lucky with your stock picks to be liable for any CGT!

+1 for X-O, tools are rubbish, but if you are doing your research elsewhere it is cheap and efficient. Look at ETF's, no stamp duty so if you are just dabbling small amounts it will save you something.