Share Dealing - Please Help

sabretoothtigger

Thats a good talk through. Generally I would say try not to be spending more then 2% in costs when buying something. ( A large reason would be that fund managers who charge about 1.5% per year becomes a far better idea, its cheaper to trade IT funds)

Shares can double but its not really a good idea to expect that, 20% is a reasonable target for any company. So even with a 'high' 2% costs each way you'd be ok


Also an ideal strategy is to withdraw your original capital. This is hard to do without ending up with just a small holding but say you did get 100% growth its feasible and I would say sensible.
If it keeps going up you lose out but not completely and ditto if it reverses

By getting your original capital back you stop worrying so much, often a big pullback can occur before a greater rise but many sell out of worry

Under 500 is tiny, use regular dealing is probably best as you can buy more then once.
Quite often in this market the spread or even commission costs are swamped by the fact shares can fall 10% in a day, if you negotiate that 'cost' you'll be ok and being able to buy more then once is probably the best chance

srcandas

Ifts wrote: »

Maybe or on the other hand its often even harder to decide when to sell than it is to buy

That's certainly part of it Ifts which is why I think target return is so important. If you hit the target you have to justify not selling. The default is sell and store that profit, even if as sabre says you just take some. Problem as said for the OP the amount very much limits any strategy beyond longterm hold :beer:

guyb1

Thank You all for your comments, really helpful, after reading through it I like the idea of going with a Halifax Regular Investments, I believe that with this account I only have to pay £2 to buy and £2 to sell, (please could you check I am correct and havent made a mistake)which is much cheaper than my original iii idea which would cost £1.50 to buy but a massive £10 to sell, thank you so much to grey gym sock for pointing that one out, if anyone knows of anything cheaper than £2 to buy and £2 to sell that halifax offer that would be great, otherwise I will probably go ahead with Halifax. For peoples information I will probably be investing between £500-£1000 with the potential to invest up to £2000 once I get a bit more confident. Thanks, Guy

sabretoothtigger

11.95 to sell I think. The idea being you buy more then once and the exit fee is a smaller percentage by then

gkerr4

guyb1 wrote: »

Thank You all for your comments, really helpful, after reading through it I like the idea of going with a Halifax Regular Investments, I believe that with this account I only have to pay £2 to buy and £2 to sell, (please could you check I am correct and havent made a mistake)which is much cheaper than my original iii idea which would cost £1.50 to buy but a massive £10 to sell, thank you so much to grey gym sock for pointing that one out, if anyone knows of anything cheaper than £2 to buy and £2 to sell that halifax offer that would be great, otherwise I will probably go ahead with Halifax. For peoples information I will probably be investing between £500-£1000 with the potential to invest up to £2000 once I get a bit more confident. Thanks, Guy

you are surely going to pay the "full cost" when selling? - otherwise it would sell on a sheduled date - which would defeat the object of trading - i.e. the ability to sell when you see fit.

Previous posters have mentioned some good advice but one was talking about keeping a share for 5 years - I don;t think I've ever held one that long - if it rises you can sell and put the addtional money to work somewhere else.

I do agree though, and don't take this the wrong way, that £500 is too little to start with - imo you need to have about 10x that and look to develop a portfolio of about 4 or 5 shares with £1000+ per holding. Your £500 will buy you into a single stock and the fluctuations in your "portfolio" value will drive you insane.

sabretoothtigger

Swing trading would be about selling on a day or week. If the stock only spikes for 15 mins it must have been very risky in the first place, most stocks will stay in region of a good price for a while at least.
If it was GKP or XEL then maybe not so much

iii is once a month and halifax you can keep altering it to achieve 4 times if you like

grey_gym_sock

gkerr4 wrote: »

Previous posters have mentioned some good advice but one was talking about keeping a share for 5 years - I don;t think I've ever held one that long - if it rises you can sell and put the addtional money to work somewhere else.

well, my point was that how long you hold a share affects your average costs per year. i wasn't recommending holding shares for any specific general length of time. how long must depend on your investment strategy. the only issue is if your strategy and amount invested leads to excessively high costs.

however, i still have some shares that i bought about 16 years ago