I want to buy some shares

silkyuk9

never dealt in the market before and dont intend to spend big. my idea was buying maybe £100 of penny shares, lets say Yell for instance who were 3p a share yesterday,today 5p. all i want to do is buy some penny shares as a bit of fun and sell if the market goes up and rebuy others and hopefully make a few quid (not millions)

Ok, I need help to where I buy and sell shares from so I can start to trade.

like I say im not into this big time but its better than wasting money on the horses and lottery etc.

Linton

silkyuk9 wrote: »

never dealt in the market before and dont intend to spend big. my idea was buying maybe £100 of penny shares, lets say Yell for instance who were 3p a share yesterday,today 5p. all i want to do is buy some penny shares as a bit of fun and sell if the market goes up and rebuy others and hopefully make a few quid (not millions)

Ok, I need help to where I buy and sell shares from so I can start to trade.

like I say im not into this big time but its better than wasting money on the horses and lottery etc.

No, its not. Its much the same.

There are several things that can go wrong:

1) Buying and sellng shares involves stamp duty and charges - buying and selling £100 worth of shares could cost perhaps £15-£20 even from one of the cheaper brokers. You need to be thinking about £500 or £1000 at least.
2) With penny shares there is often a large difference between selling and buying price so the shares have to go up significantly before you start making a profit.
3) A low priced share can go down and stay down. Just because its low priced doesnt mean its good value.
4) Penny shares can be illiquid - you want to sell but no-one actually wants to buy. So your one attempt to sell could pull the price down.

Successful trading requires deep knowledge and deep pockets. Its an easy way for the newbie investor to lose money.

RoyBrock7898

If you want to invest then you need to consider a holding of about £500 but you don't need to invest all at once. As Linton says dealing charges could bite into your cash.

If OTOH you invest through a regular investment scheme you could chose a very low cost broker. I pay £1.50 per trade plus 0.5% duty. That is 2% for £100. If I invested £500 in one go the charge would be 0.8%. OTOH if I did invest all £500 in one go I stand the risk of buying on a high. By spreading over a number of months I am averaging my buy.

What to buy? Many would advocate a FTSE100 share. I would suggest considering one where the price is near the bottom of a 12 month spread. Also one that has a high yield. If it goes up and you get a good dividend then you have a double hit.

On a whim Mrs B wanted to invest in a couple of shares. One went belly up the other lost 30%; neither were FTSE100 and one has never paid a dividend.

Dan_Iggulden

Penny shares are worse than gambling on horses to be honest with you! I remember the first share I ever bought, a company called Newport Networks, they were on the cusp of a huge deal with an unamed mobile phone manufacturer (according to the chatter) that was going to set the share price to the sky! I bought £500 at 3.4p and promptly say them rise to 4p in about 2 hours, I checked the next day and the shares were down to 2p, 12 months later the company went bust.
Penny shares are a huge gamble. My advice, if you want to do it for fun or seriously, you need to school up on how it all works... I read a great book from Robbie someone, cant remeber his name, called The Naked Trader, a really interesting read and will give you a real insight to how it all works.

Ifts

silkyuk9 wrote: »

Ok, I need help to where I buy and sell shares from so I can start to trade.

You could always have a practice first without committing real money, try it for a while and see if its something that you think you could be good at.

Here is the link for the Share Centre*: Practice trading shares with FREE practice account, you will have to register but its free.

Once you have registered you will have access to advice to help you get started and research tools so you can learn more about the market.

*I'm sure there are other companies that offer practice accounts too.

chris_m

RoyBrock7898 wrote: »

On a whim Mrs B wanted to invest in a couple of shares. One went belly up the other lost 30%; neither were FTSE100 and one has never paid a dividend.

Whether to stick to FTSE100 stock or not depends on your attitude to risk, especially AIM listed stocks. You can make a lot or lose a lot with those.

I count myself lucky so far, having been dabbling in AIM-listed oilers and miners (amongst other things). My worst performing is an oiler at 70% down, largely since the Japanese earthquake so I'm holding to see if they do recover, not a huge loss if they don't though.
My best was a miner, bought at 5.5p and sold at 27.5p. Unfortunately I panicked a tad when they suddenly dropped from 36p and bailed out before they carried on down to less than 20p. Had I held my nerve, I could have sold for 70p a couple of months later, such is hindsight. Then again, I could have still held then to see them come down again, they closed today at 19p.

The important thing is that, although I am adopting a risky strategy for now, I am not using money I cannot afford to lose and it's spread around so it would take an entire market collapse for me to lose everything - but I think we'd all have more to worry about than individual holdings if that happened.

gl196

If you want to invest the right way you need to save up until you have at least £1,000 preferably £3,000-£5,000 to start off with

MSWannabe

A good idea is to know what is happening around you. Small businesses that are yet to set off, new businesses on the market etc, see who is doing well.

Set up an RSS feed and follow business feeds from all sites that publish news frequently to understand and use your own initiative to find out potential growth and money makers.

It'll be better if you invest shares in a company that you have an interest in. I personally do within the music business and the digital market.

New to RSS? Google it! I would post links but I'm a new user and cannot!