Impulse buying shares I3 ENERGY PLC

AnotherJoe

Thrugelmir wrote: »

What's wrong with "oil"?

Aside the political considerations that drive its price (not dissimilar to gold) its price is dependent upon a precarious balance between supply and demand and that is starting to become disrupted by electric cars and increased efficiencies in FF cars. EVs are at the start of an exponential growth phase, and the relatively small % of oil consumption that will displace will have a disproportionate downward effect on price making many sources uneconomical to extract and leaving billions of dollars of stranded assets underground, those dollars currently in the price of oil stocks.
An overview here
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-ev-oil-crisis/

lpgm

sevenhills wrote: »

Just curious to know if its just me that gambles with investments?

In this forum, savings and investments, probably yes. I don't think much impulse buying goes on here.

masonic

sevenhills wrote: »

But is an advisor much better than chance?

The choices aren't limited to taking a punt on individual shares and going to an adviser. The choices are:

DIY investing in individual shares - less than 0.1% of the population would be able to do this effectively
DIY investing in self-selected investment funds - suitable for most people who have an emergency fund (a subset of this category is investing in index tracker funds, which are the best option for most people)*
Investing under advice in individual shares - may be suitable for high net worth individuals in certain circumstances
Investing under advice in investment funds - suitable for those without the confidence or inclination to manage their own investments*

The ones with a * are much more likely to produce a favourable result compared to the topic of the thread.

TBC15

sevenhills wrote: »

But is an advisor much better than chance?


The risk can be reduced if you hold the shares for years, or as long as required, the more shares held the better.
I have never added up my losses and gains, but if I trade enough, I will be comparable to the average

If an IFA advised me to buy individual shares I’d probably give him a Paddington bear hard stare closely followed by a wide berth.

Individual shares are such hard work I think most people would be better off with funds.

Reaper

Personally I use funds, ETFs etc for the majority of my investments plus a smaller amount in direct shares for fun. They tend to be higher risk and often come unstuck, so I am glad they only represent a small proportion of the total.

bowlhead99

sevenhills wrote: »

I don't claim to know anything about shares, how can Joe public do anything else but gamble when they buy shares.
I have just bought £600 worth of I3 ENERGY PLC

With some companies such as Apple or Alphabet or Amazon, there are lots of analysts and brokers covering the company's prospects and billions of pounds worth of shares changing hands every week. This can result in a relatively efficient market, so that although you're taking a gamble on whether or not you'll make money when you have a punt on buying a single company's shares, you will probably get a 'fair' price when buying or selling, based on what the market thinks the company is worth based on all the information flying around.

The problem with buying shares in a very small individual company which doesn't have lots of analyst and broker coverage or much dealing in its shares - when you don't know anything about shares anyway - is that not only do you not know how it will turn out, you don't really know if the price is 'fair'. As the market's collective opinion is based on fewer opinions and data points, there can be a dislocation between the market's opinion and its true prospects, and this can be especially true for small oil explorers with limited newsflow and the chance for share price to jump or collapse every time something's announced.

Investing in such shares can be a gamble, but without the immediate payoff of going to a casino - at the casino you would place your bets and get paid almost immediately, while in the stock market you have to wait longer for a meaningful gain or loss.

If you enjoy researching and selecting stocks as some sort of a hobby, as some do, that can explain why some people take a punt on an oil company or supermarket share rather than placing a bet on a football match or getting dressed up for a night in Vegas as others might like to do. But if you don't know anything about stocks and don't have any interest in doing proper research, then you are not really doing it for the reward of it being a 'hobby', so you might as well place a bet at the bookies (which are likely to be fair odds because of a competitive market, despite being stacked against the punter) or a casino where the games have fixed and determinable odds.

I like the fun/ hobby aspect of it so I have 20+ individual company holdings across my ISA / pension / unwrapped investment accounts, and some of them are much higher risk than others - but most of my money is in funds or investment trusts or similar.

Malthusian

TBC15 wrote: »

If an IFA advised me to buy individual shares I’d probably give him a Paddington bear hard stare closely followed by a wide berth.

IFAs aren't allowed to advise you to buy individual shares anyway - while they're wearing their IFA hat. It requires a separate permission from the FCA and different qualifications.

If they've multiclassed to IFA-stockbroker then they could tell you to buy individual shares with their stockbroker hat on. It would be quite unusual however as it's a completely different job.

Thrugelmir

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Aside the political considerations that drive its price (not dissimilar to gold) its price is dependent upon a precarious balance between supply and demand and that is starting to become disrupted by electric cars and increased efficiencies in FF cars. EVs are at the start of an exponential growth phase, and the relatively small % of oil consumption that will displace will have a disproportionate downward effect on price making many sources uneconomical to extract and leaving billions of dollars of stranded assets underground, those dollars currently in the price of oil stocks.
An overview here
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-ev-oil-crisis/

Oil companies too are investing future technologies. EV's are going to require a huge investment in infrastructure something that the major incumbrents are well positioned to take advantage of.

Ciprico

I learnt the hard way...

Bought Sainsburys just after the ASDA deal failed on the basis markets overreact to bad news. They then fell further.
Starting to recover now and do provide a reasonable dividend....

Same logic with Ryan Air when their pilots went on strike a few years back and their shares tanked - and then went on tanking...

So only trackers and the odd IT now...

Did buy into Blackrock Mining Trust as a long term play on EV (all that copper in the motor windings and chemicals in batteries !). But it too pays a reasonable dividend and is selling at a 15% discount so should stand on its own merits...

....and whilst on holiday at a destination liked by Chinese saw that the average Chinese person these days is fat (sorry!). When looking for good diabetes stock, found I was already quite heavily invested in Novo-Nordisk in various trackers and ITs...

Apologies for ramblings and to any Chinese who read these....

itwasntme001

Own a bunch of single stocks including amazon, google, microsoft, fevertree, tobacco, jp morgan, british land, rdsb and few others. Overall done very well on them. Most likely luck more then anything else