Probably a very simple question RE stock value gain

tl202

Hi all, apologies if this is a stupidly simple question.

I am a new young investor who has just opened up a stocks and shares isa with Hargreaves Lansdown. I've bought a round number of shares in a company which have seen some gains over the past few days but I can't figure out the maths behind them and am wondering whether anybody could explain what is going on so I can better calculate future investments.

Essentially, I purchased a round number of stocks at 50.00gbx, the sell price is now 52.00gbx. There's almost definitely something I haven't factored in but I would expect this increase to have returned 02.00gbx multiplied by the number of shares I purchased but it's actually closer to 01.70gbx times the number of shares. I don't think there's any ongoing charges for holding shares through HL, only the transaction fee which is taken out of cash holdings in the ISA.

If anybody could explain what's going on or link me to some websites that go into more detail I would be really grateful. It's not a massive issue as I'm mostly just experimenting with small amounts of money at first to make investing seem less daunting. I'd like to fully understand why prices are what they are before making the jump to proper investing though!

Thanks in advance.

Username999

Stamp Duty?

Linton

What is the stock?  There are several things that could explain what you are seeing...

1) Timing - the price could easily change by a fraction of 1p in a few minutes

2) The source of the pricing data - for example you can get different values for the closing price in a particular day.

3) There may be a significant difference between buy and sell prices.  Often the published price is the average of the two

4) Did the 50.00gbx include stamp duty and purchase charges?

tl202

Ahh, it's probably stamp duty then. I'm definitely factoring in closing and sell price and off the top of my head 0.5% on the original purchase would probably account for the discrepancy.

To be honest I'd completely forgotten that the s&s isa doesn't completely shield you from all tax... rookie mistake! Cheers both.

bargainhunter888

i'm sure the £11.95 transaction charge comes out of the sale too?

Albermarle

The usual advice on here to young/inexperienced investor is to avoid trading in individual shares and instead go for a multi asset fund and just add to it every month but otherwise leave it alone .
Trading in individual shares is best left to the professionals. 

Alexland

Albermarle said:

Trading in individual shares is best left to the professionals. 

And most of those professional stock pickers are best avoided too.