Any broker recommendations?

bigadaj

jimjames wrote: »

And equally can't sell in stages or quickly either.

If I want to sell some funds I can today and have the money in my account in a few days. You can't do that with a property.

Well you could probably sell the property quickly but wouldn't like the price you'd get.

bowlhead99

Darkblue wrote: »

Just to clear things up - I would use an execution only broker, I am not seeking advice on what shares to buy but rather a decent broker whom people have used and are happy with.

Picking which shares to buy is a different game, and on that note, does anyone here have any experience with Share Watch?

Darkblue,
This thread has gone a bit off topic from your original post.

Based on the experiences of many here, for a no frills execution-only broker for dealing in UK shares, without inactivity fees, you can't really beat http://www.x-o.co.uk on price.

If you want more frills, I personally use http://www.tddirectinvesting.co.uk
The price per trade is higher unless you're doing a large volume of trading, but they have more advanced features.

For example, you can trade on extended settlement terms (e.g. T+5, T+10, T+20); multiple overseas markets; multicurrency cash account to avoid forex fees on getting Dollar or Euro or HKD or JPY proceeds and reinvesting them without going back to sterling; iPhone and Android apps; ability to also hold Funds (Oeics, unit trusts) through their platform. The platform, if you need it, has a reasonably low percentage-based platform fee (percentage-based is good if you don't have a high account balance where explicit flat fees on other fund platforms would be more efficient), etc etc. Basically they are a broker with a large and international parent company which built its UK reputation on broking rather than being a fund supermarket, but do now also have a reasonable Funds platform.

TD have a quarterly inactivity fee if you don't trade, and aren't signed up to a monthly regular investing account or don't also have an ISA account (which itself has an annual fee if you have under £5k with them or don't use regular investing). Personally i haven't paid it for years as I've qualified to be fee-free one way or the other. There are swings and roundabouts with the fee structures of all fund platforms and brokers so it depends if you want no-frills share brokerage, or more bells and whistles with your brokerage, or actually are going to use more funds instead.

In terms of tip sheets, Small Company Share Watch and a whole raft of equivalents will claim to tell you when to buy and sell companies at the right time and will have a lot of winners with the benefit of hindsight, together with a lot of losers. Like any of the tipsters they will qualify and caveat any tip they make with the statement that it is not "advice" for your circumstances, just ideas.

Tens of different brokers publish buy, sell, hold recommendations daily and weekly for their clients and their statements are in the public domain as soon as they're published. As such, there is no particular demonstrable value to paying money for a tip sheet. You can see a range of personal opinions, analysis and research on listed companies large and small on forums as ADVFN, Motley Fool, iii, lse.co.uk etc etc. Many comments are written with some sort of blatant or subtle vested interest and should not considered impartial but there are plenty of ideas and angles on why a particular company is worthy or unworthy of a punt.

So, long story short: TD are a good broker but not cheapest in town; X-O are cheaper with fewer features; You are right that the share picking aspect is somewhat tricky which is why most beginners and/or people without large cash reserves and fund portfolios are encouraged to first have enough cash for their foreseeable needs, second have some diversified Fund (or investment trust or ETF) exposure, before getting excited by individual company shares.

HTH.

jimjames wrote: »

Just shows that day trading is not a way to make money.

bluesnake wrote: »

I am sure many people that earn their money in investing, gain majority of their money from advising, rather than from their own portfolio. Sort of 'Physician heal thy self'

I don't think this is true. Fund managers obviously make money as do advisers but in the end it is the portfolio that grows.

You've lost money and your vision is clouded by that but you were not investing and day trading is a world apart from that.

A huge number of people make money from investing in things other than residential property. A typical employee hoping to make provision for anything beyond the bare minimum state pension retirement payouts, will these days be using a money purchase / defined contribution pension investment rather than being able to access guaranteed lump sums from former employers.

Their aim is to put away 5-10-20% of their salary each year while earning a salary for 30-40 years and have it invested for them, so that they can later draw sufficient income from it to last them the next 30-40 years at more than 5-10-20% of their final salary let alone their average salary. To do this (achieving returns significantly better than inflation) is only possible by accessing investment returns, and such returns are typically achieved from a portfolio of equities and bonds over long time periods.

After the fees charged by fund managers, advisers and other incidental service providers, millions of people are still able to access sufficent returns to retire successfully as described above. A majority never go anywhere near self-selecting a portfolio of individual company stocks to purchase. Obviously we would all like to do a bit better but as millions get somewhere close to achieving their goals, it is completely disingenuous to say that people do not earn from their own investing, only from advising others. The majority of people you come across (i.e. the general public), who are investing in proper organised schemes, do not make any money from advising others and still make perfectly adequate returns.

I take the point that professional fund managers take more returns from a 1-5% fixed or performance-based return on the hundreds of millions invested for others than the 10-20% they might make on the personal million that they invest in the strategy from their own bank account. Having knowledge and skills and being able to market themselves, does not in itself make them charlatans or evil tycoons that you should write off because "if they were that good at investing they would invest their own money rather than sell their skills to others". Many do both.

You are confusing, having a punt on some get-rich-quick, high-risk investment scheme, with a long term, sensible-risk, investment plan. Clearly if you buy advice from two brokers and one says buy Tesco and one says buy Sainsbury, one will likely be right and one wrong; if you listen to both, on balance you will achieve the market return while overall perhaps even lose due to the fees you paid. This does not mean you can't make money from Tesco or Sainsbury over time, or indeed the general retail sector or UK stockmarket in general, or that neither broker can be trusted to have picked a decent stock.

Buying one broker's opinion or listening to one internet forum poster's opinion is perhaps flawed in that they are only one opinion in a sea of many, often free, ideas. So when considering paying an investment adviser, investment manager, stockbroker or publisher, for an idea or a discretionary management service, caution should be exercised. But the idea that equities investing can lose money over 15 years so it should be avoided in favour of property investing (which is usually geared with loans) seems flawed. Just avoid high risk self-select (or broker-select) individual company stock picking, i.e "trading strategies", in favour of get-rich-slower schemes instead.

Darkblue

Bowlhead99 - thanks for your point of view,food for thought for me.

The first time I heard about Sharewatch, I read about it in The Armchair Investor by Bernice Cohen, which I think came out in 1993. Sharewatch was just one of the tools she would use to pick her shares which is why I have an interest in it.

marvin

Good post bowlhead99

I have two trading accounts x-o and Halifax, I use Halifax where I need to act fast, taking advantage of a dip in price as an example because the x-o account takes a very long time to get money from my account to the trading account whereas Halifax is instant. Halifax charge £12:50 per trade but also have regular days where they charge £3.50 for a couple of hours. There are no other fees for this account other than dealing costs.

With x-o you need to keep money in the account to trade with or hang around which is ok for price stable shares.

The only advice I would give is know what you are buying for and buy accordingly. If you are after dividends buy relatively price stable dividend payers. If after capital gains then buy the more risky shares or ones who have had issues and should bounce back, eventually, because the business is sound. Do lots of research and only buy in businesses you understand.

To see the daily best divi shares (be aware this does not take into account special divis or cuts in divis to come such as Tesco who have recently announced a 75% cut in their interim divi this is not shown here and won't be until after it is paid.)

http://www.topyields.nl/Top-dividend-yields-of-FTSE100.php

Again research, research and when you have done your research, research it some more!

Usual caveat - never use money you cannot afford to lose to buy shares they are not bank accounts where you are guaranteed to get back at least what you put in it is very possible to lose everything! Shares have more in common with gambling. Also remember divi gains may be wiped out by price drops but this only matters when selling.

Ifts

marvin wrote: »

the x-o account takes a very long time to get money from my account to the trading account whereas Halifax is instant.

With x-o you need to keep money in the account to trade with or hang around which is ok for price stable shares.

That's the opposite of my experience when crediting my X-O account.

I use my debit card when I want to credit my X-O account and the funds are there to use straight away.

marvin

Ifts wrote: »

That's the opposite of my experience when crediting my X-O account.

I use my debit card when I want to credit my X-O account and the funds are there to use straight away.

I use a debit card last time too 3 days to arrive and it does warn up to 5 days when making the payment.

I will do another test sometime see if it was just because everything was new.

Edit

Nope no immediate credit with another test deposit.

Ifts

marvin wrote: »

I use a debit card last time too 3 days to arrive and it does warn up to 5 days when making the payment.

I will do another test sometime see if it was just because everything was new.

I think things have changed since then, this from their 'How to use X-O' page:

4 - How do I fund my account? To fund your account, click on the Make a Payment button which can be found in the secure section of the website and follow the instructions. We accept Maestro or VISA/Delta debit cards. Funds are usually credited to your account within an hour (during normal working hours) and once confirmed, will be available to trade with straight away. Please note that you cannot make payments using a credit card. Alternatively you can click here to make an online payment. For details on how to withdraw money from your account see Q.24.

http://www.x-o.co.uk/how_to_use.htm#4

marvin wrote: »

Edit

Nope no immediate credit with another test deposit.

Edit - See above it says: Funds are usually credited to your account within an hour - during normal working hours.

marvin

Ifts wrote: »

I think things have changed since then, this from their 'How to use X-O' page:



http://www.x-o.co.uk/how_to_use.htm#4



Edit - See above it says: Funds are usually credited to your account within an hour - during normal working hours.

Still too slow this is not immediately

Ifts

marvin wrote: »

Still too slow this is not immediately

They say within the hour but its pretty much instant, last time I credited my account and immediately it was there showing as my cash balance to trade with.

marvin

Ok I will try a test deposit when they are open see how that goes but cannot see why it is not immediate all the time as it is with other brokers.