How do I find which platforms offer the funds/ shares I want?

vitamin_joe

I'm interested in, for example, investing in Amazon, Poundland and Samarang Asian Prosperity. How do I easily find all the platforms that offer these shares? 

Thrugelmir

Any LSE broker is authorised to trade shares. 

masonic

You've given examples of a US share, a de-listed UK share and an offshore fund. I think you'll struggle to find a platform offering the last two.

vitamin_joe

Thanks. How do I/ does one discover how to invest in these examples? Or alternatively, how does one find out whether or not it is possible? I would not have known that the last two would probably be unavailable.  

Alistair31

vitamin_joe said:

Thanks. How do I/ does one discover how to invest in these examples? Or alternatively, how does one find out whether or not it is possible? I would not have known that the last two would probably be unavailable.  

Most platforms let you search them before signing up, if they ain’t there, they ain’t there. 

bowlhead99

vitamin_joe said:

Thanks. How do I/ does one discover how to invest in these examples? Or alternatively, how does one find out whether or not it is possible? I would not have known that the last two would probably be unavailable.  

There are tens of thousands of individual companies which have chosen to be available for trading on major stock exchanges around the world. However, there are over a hundred million companies in the world that are not listed on any stock exchange, and are simply holding companies or trading companies owned by individuals, institutions or other bigger companies.  You can't just look at a business and think, "I like that business, I'm going to buy it, now what stockbroker will help me do that". Most companies are not available on any stock exchange at all.

However, before you make an investment you would first do some rudimentary research . Read its financial accounts and news releases etc. Otherwise how would you know that you wanted to buy it?  Only if you know that Poundland makes £2 billion a year of revenue, rather than £2 million or just £2, and it made a certain amount of profit last year, and it only has a few hundred million of debt, and you understand its margins and cost base and the specific challenges it faces in the retail sector in the UK and abroad, you can start to put a value on the business, and figure out what you might be willing to pay to own a small fractional share of the business.

However, if you started digging into it in any detail, you couldn't fail to notice that its shares don't trade on any stock exchange because it's 100% owned by Steinhoff group, an international conglomerate who own other UK, European, African and Australasian businesses. Shares in Steinhoff are available on the Frankfurt and Johannesburg stock exchanges - so if you were still interested in researching them further you would at least know that your start point to buy Steinhoff would be to use a broker that offers trading on the major German and South African markets. The shares can currently be picked up for a bargain 5 eurocents, less than half what they were trading at in February before a lot of their retail operations were closed down due to COVID-19, and about a seventieth of the price they were trading at in 2017 before Steinhoff's massive issues with fraud and accounting irregularities were uncovered.

Samarang Asian Prosperity is a Luxembourg domiciled fund which has a UK facilities agent and provides the required disclosures for UK investors to be allowed to invest into it. However, a cursory glance at the Organisation tab of Samarang's website when you went there to take a look at the prospectus and annual reports would tell you that the fund is currently closed to new subscriptions.

So in some cases the answer to 'how does one find out it is not possible' is as simple as Googling 'who owns poundland' and taking it from there, or going to the fund manager's website. If you were serious about actually spending your hard earned money to buy equity ownership of the Poundland business you would have surely picked up the intel along the way when you tried to find out how much money they make and what assets they have. 

badger09

I think, what you're being told, is that unless you are prepared to devote a lot of time and energy to researching individual companies, then you probably shouldn't invest that way. You've been told that in the past. What happened to change your mind about investing in global equity, or multi asset funds? 

vitamin_joe

bowlhead99 said:

There are tens of thousands of individual companies [...]

Thanks a lot, that's an incredibly helpful post. 

bowlhead99 said:

Samarang Asian Prosperity is a Luxembourg domiciled fund which has a UK facilities agent and provides the required disclosures for UK investors to be allowed to invest into it. However, a cursory glance at the Organisation tab of Samarang's website when you went there to take a look at the prospectus and annual reports would tell you that the fund is currently closed to new subscriptions.

Yes, I read a couple of weeks ago that the fund had reopened for an unspecified amount of time, after years of being closed. It piqued my interest, but perhaps the window of opportunity has gone already. 

vitamin_joe

badger09 said:

I think, what you're being told, is that unless you are prepared to devote a lot of time and energy to researching individual companies, then you probably shouldn't invest that way. You've been told that in the past. What happened to change your mind about investing in global equity, or multi asset funds? 

Ummm, I think you may have me confused with another poster?

bowlhead99

vitamin_joe said:

badger09 said:

I think, what you're being told, is that unless you are prepared to devote a lot of time and energy to researching individual companies, then you probably shouldn't invest that way. You've been told that in the past. What happened to change your mind about investing in global equity, or multi asset funds? 

Ummm, I think you may have me confused with another poster?

In February on https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6109149/a-good-off-the-peg-defensive-strategy-for-a-small-sum#latest you were saying that you were looking for a simple passive off-the-peg investment strategy such as the multi asset funds that allocate across the various sectors, although you were unsure about government bonds, and that any portfolio you put together would have to be simple and passive and you weren't really interested in trading.

vitamin_joe said (in previous linked thread)

 I'm looking for a passive investment, one that I don't have to manage too much. Something that won't necessarily give great returns, but will protect against a bear market, inflation and volatility. I've looked very briefly at Vanguard Ls and L&G multi-index, but I'm not keen on government bonds, and I'd like to have some gold in there possibly as well. I haven't ruled them out; it's mostly the government bonds that put me off. I'm hoping to start with 3 or 4K, and probably not add much more for a long while. 
edit- I'd consider putting my own portfolio together, but it would have to be a simple and passive one, as I'm a novice. I'm also not that interested in managing a fund, or trading. 

So what happened since then that has made you think that you should forget the idea of buying a diversified off-the-shelf fund, and the idea of a 'passive investment' that 'will protect against a bear market', so that you are now considering investing your money into Poundland (without even knowing whether it is the type of company that accepts investment from members of the public - it isn't) and Samarang Asian (a specialist managed asian investment fund run out of Luxembourg), and Amazon (a large retailer/IT business which isn't highly profitable for its size)?

That seems a long way from what you were initially looking to do which was to invest £3-4k into a passive fund that wouldn't necessarily give massive returns but would protect capital in a bear market. A portfolio of one privately owned UK-focussed low-margin retailer, one multinational retail/IT business and one niche managed Asian fund, seems spectacularly different from your original aim of a 'simple and passive portfolio' bought as an off-the-peg product, that will protect against a bear market.

vitamin_joe

Well firstly, the main part of the post that I didn't recognise as being to do with me was the section which says, "you've been told that in the past." I haven't had anyone tell me this in the past, so it seemed a logical conclusion that I had been mistaken for someone else.  

The post you have quoted received no replies, and I continued to do my own research. What changed? Well, for a start the market collapsed. I'm not keen to invest in stocks and shares right now, because I feel there is further to fall, but I am interested in learning about ways of doing this when the outlook is more positive. That's the purpose of this thread- to learn more about investing, without necessarily wanting to put my money where my mouth is right at this moment. As a beginner, it would seem to me to be a crucial time to exercise a certain amount of caution, whilst also seeking to increase my knowledge base. That would seem to me to be a fair strategy. 

The three potential investments I chose were examples, as stated in the original post. I've learned a lot from it, and I appreciate the help I've been given.