Day trading on the stock market

shaun_from_Africa

Keep most of the 54k in the bank or building society and have a go at gambling on the stock exchange with £540 (1% of your savings).
You may win or you may lose but at least if you do lose it will only be a modest loss and whatever happens, you will have learn a bit about how share dealing works.

Thrugelmir

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

have a go at gambling on the stock exchange with £540 (1% of your savings).

Dealing costs and the spread will eradicate most gains on a stake of this size.

In the example you've given OP. That's a 6% price movement. Would have to be some exceptionally good news to move a share such as Lloyds that amount in a single trading session. As would add £3 billion to it's market capitalisation. Easier for smaller companies to double their revenue than larger ones. Not that I'm suggesting this is the market to target, As Corporate Governance isn't as tight.

Jonbvn

I've done some quick trades and made a good profit. I felt like Warren Buffet for a minute or two. Subsequently I've done some quick trades and lost money and realised that originally I wasn't smart, just lucky

shaun_from_Africa

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Dealing costs and the spread will eradicate most gains on a stake of this size.

The stockbroker I currently use is TD direct and they charge £5.95 per deal for the first 3 months when opening a new account.
I agree that the OP wouldn't make much, if any profit using such a small sum, but I only suggested it as a teaching exercise.

If the OP was to do as they suggested in their first post and only bought shares in one company the dealing costs would be minimal.
The share price wouldn't have to rise too much for them to recoup the £5.95 trading fee and even if the price plummeted, they could only lose a maximum of 1% of their savings.
You can't really learn the ins and outs of gambling on the stockmarket without some financial risk, but personally, I think it foolish in the extreme to jump in with all or a large part of your savings without having a small dabble for a fair while first.

cloud_dog

If the OP really wants to day-trade then why not try CFDs or spread betting..... No, wait.....that would be bad (for their financial health).

redux

Lloyds has traded between 69.95 and 70.03 for most of the last 4 hours.

You're earning less than minimum wage.

Earlier it dropped to 69.5 not long after opening, then went up to 70.4 briefly before settling in the range mentioned above. How did you know it would do this? If not why not?

An investment trust I hold dropped by about 13 pence late yesterday afternoon then rose by 12 pence early this morning, so down and up about 2%.

It would be pure delusional fantasy to imagine these sort of things could have been predictable.

MataNui

If you want to try day trading thats fine, give it a go. Its not as easy as it seems but its not impossible. Shares are difficult though. With shares there is no leverage and intra-day movement is typically not enough with a small pot to overcome spread and commissions. You wouldnt be making much more than a few pence per transaction (assuming you made much a profit at all). The plus side is your not going to lose much either.

Why dont you open a spread betting demo account to see if day trading actually suits you. Its free to open a demo account and you can trade shares, index futures and currencies. If you find you are successful then open a real account. Spreads are less than trading equities via a broker (no commissions at all), you need to put less in (only £100 in many cases) and with leverage you can actually make something back (obviously slowly and not huge returns off £100 but its not bad).

Grenage

About 6 years ago I spent £20 with an online forex trader, and over a week I turned that into £280.

As you can imagine, I had to assume I was some sort of natural - a forex prodigy. I went on to lose pretty much all of the £280 in subsequent trades, and the reality was clear.

If you honestly think that you can realistically make that kind of money, with that kind of capital, in that kind of time-frame, on the stock market... you absolutely should not be trading on the stock market.

Froggitt

Why not open a Betfair account and bet on tennis.....win/lose or up/down its the same thing really.

Ifts

Maybe before you commit real money try it with 'fantasy money' using a practice account:

https://www.share.com/accounts/other...ount-overview/

Do remember that the practice account is free of dealing charges so make sure you account for dealing costs of buying and selling (*£6 to buy & £6 to sell, plus stamp duty is payable at 0.5% of the value of the shares purchased) when doing your sums and see how you do without risking your own money.
Also I would add using a practice account will give you some idea in what is involved but it will differ when using real money, emotions etc.