shares to start with

cwrw

What's the take out there for prospective shares relating to dividend and are price prospects. I'm eyeing up some shares to buy in the near future and was looking at for instance BT which seems to be a good prospect for relative growth within the next 3 years and some increasing dividends along the way.Equally, Glaxo Smithkline looks like longer term gains for the next 5 years and on. Any suggestions where I should be looking for better prospects than this for the next 1-5 years. MANY THANKS.

jimjames

What else is in your portfolio and how much are you looking to put into each share?

cwrw

Hi
I want to start from scratch and I am perspectively looking at investing around 1-2 k per share holding, and varying from 2 to 4 dealings a year. I would like to find a tracker or diverse fund as vanguard 60/80 but cheaper (which I am led to believe can be found in Blackrock). I have yet to identify this fund alternative or like minded upon Iweb site.

Linton

My view is that you should decide on a purpose for holding shares and develop your knowledge of specific areas. For example I am retired and rather like income. So I focus on solid companies whose shares provide good dividends. Others I know like mining shares or perhaps high tech companies. Perhaps you may have knowledge from work of some particular sector which you can use to identify the good and bad shares.

What you dont want to do is to go for random "tips" taken from the full universe of all possible shares.

For more general investing I believe you should use funds of some form.

Wilkins

cwrw wrote: »

Hi
I want to start from scratch and I am perspectively looking at investing around 1-2 k per share holding, and varying from 2 to 4 dealings a year. I would like to find a tracker or diverse fund as vanguard 60/80 but cheaper (which I am led to believe can be found in Blackrock). I have yet to identify this fund alternative or like minded upon Iweb site.

Not sure from this whether you are after individual shares or funds or both.

Building my own fund by collecting shares is what I have done over the past 25 years, and it has been interesting, but I would not claim that it is the best way to prosperity.

cwrw

Thanks for the reply. I have very limited knowledge of the market, and would like to look into a fund if not two, but since I have a perspective of remaining open to the intervening of chance within the equation to a greater degree within my shares portion, I was hoping to balance this out with broader funds as blackrock diverse funds. The shares portion would be with a perspective of share price increase over whatever timescale - it would be an opportunistic buy/sell. The other half of the shares would be more targeted towards dividend provision and held over a longer term period. I have no work related connections to give me any advantage.

jimjames

cwrw wrote: »

The shares portion would be with a perspective of share price increase over whatever timescale - it would be an opportunistic buy/sell. The other half of the shares would be more targeted towards dividend provision and held over a longer term period. I have no work related connections to give me any advantage.

Personally I would just stick to funds then.

You can have fun selecting shares and watching them but ultimately it is much more likely to perform worse than just buying trackers and letting the market work it's magic compounding over time.

cwrw

It is all relative in my thoughts of the moment regarding shares - optimistically if 1000 shares go up 20 points in sell price over a period of a year, and if you have only got approximately £1300 invested - sell the shares (-£11 trading and duties) you would clear above £150 - bad maths above 11% in a year + any dividend. How many cheap to run funds are matching that? Curiously what do others understand about the annual fees of some of the Blackrock funds upon IWEB as they do not seem to incur any (ie are costs taken from them before profits are shared?

Linton

cwrw wrote: »

It is all relative in my thoughts of the moment regarding shares - optimistically if 1000 shares go up 20 points in sell price over a period of a year, and if you have only got approximately £1300 invested - sell the shares (-£11 trading and duties) you would clear above £150 - bad maths above 11% in a year + any dividend. How many cheap to run funds are matching that? Curiously what do others understand about the annual fees of some of the Blackrock funds upon IWEB as they do not seem to incur any (ie are costs taken from them before profits are shared?

And if they go down???

With only £1300 invested you are probably talking about holding shares in one company. That company could fail completely and you would lose all your money. If you held two companies shares the chances are much lower that both would fail. The more shares you hold the lower your risk. But the higher the costs as buy/sells tend to be fixed costs. The point at which the decrease in risk ceases to become worthwhile is perhaps 15-20 shares. But I would say that any holding of less than say £2000 is too small to be worthwhile. So share investing is best left to those with a £50K pot or more, as you would want to hold other things than individual shares.

If you want to see the returns from funds over 1-10 years look on www.trustnet.com. You can get a full list of all funds and sort by return over specific periods. Very many funds in a good year are capable of returning >11% - over the past 12 months, which havent been great for equity investors, CF Milton UK Smaller Companies returned 65%. This isnt a recommendation as such funds can be very volatile.

The returns given for funds are AFTER all fund specific charges have been paid - funds dont send you an annual bill but simply take the money they need from the total all-investor investment pot. Of course your platform and your advisor, if you have one, may well have their own charges but these are not generally fund specific.

cwrw

So, investing for those with 10k or so is more profitable over a 10-15 year period when stocks are compared to shares. Funds have less risk, and relatively more profit over such a time period. Whilst this may be true is it a reasonable strategy to have some funds that are for shorter periods (e.g FTSE 100 /small caps/niche interest) when the going is good, and other less volatile trackers etc for a more significant portion of investment (e.g a good low cost alternative to vanguard 60 LS - IF ANYONE KNOWS OF ANY?). Cheers.