Investing advice (beginner)

TraffordB98

Hello,
So I recently started reading up on articles about investing and watched plenty of videos. It seems very interesting and also profitable (if you place your money wisely 😉). So I took the plunge and downloaded the Hargreaves Lansdown app and deposited a small sum of money so I could “wet my feet”. On the attached image you can see my stock value is £19.92 and my cash value is -£31.38.
I know it seems a vague question, but would someone mind in “simple terms” shedding some light on what this means? 

Any advice is greatly appreciated 
Thank you

TraffordB98

Here is the attached image sorry

bowlhead99

I am guessing you deposited £50 and then spent about £31 buying the shares (about £20-worth of shares plus stamp duty and a dealing charge / transaction fee), so you have a little under £19 remaining 'available to invest'.

As you only recently funded your account with cash, the £50 cash receipt is not showing on the account in the app, so the account report is showing it's gone 'overdrawn' by £31 though this will fix itself when the money you deposited eventually shows up and the cash value goes to £19 instead of £-31

The bottom line is that you have £20-worth of investments and £19 of investible cash, even though it has cost you £50 to get them.  Well done. If your investments go up by 50% or so from their  current £19.92 value, your overall account will be back at about £50.

This is an example of why it is not worth buying investments in tiny amounts when you will have to pay £10+ for every transaction. Better to save up and invest £1000 at a time so that the dealing costs are only a percent or so.

As an alternative to buying individual company shares on the stock exchange and having to pay £10+ every time to do it, HL offer several thousand Funds that you could invest in, where your money is pooled with other people and invested in a portfolio of hundreds of companies. The funds themselves don't trade on the stock exchange so HL don't charge you a fee to buy them.  For example this one:
https://www.hl.co.uk/funds/fund-discounts,-prices--and--factsheets/search-results/v/vanguard-ftse-global-all-cap-index-accumulation , you don't pay a transaction fee to buy it, and simply pay them 0.45% a year in annual platform fees to hold it (about 20-25p on £50 invested). The fund itself has almost 7000 company holdings.

DiamondLil

If you want to invest small amounts monthly, have a look at a platform that offers free monthly amounts. II for example. Or invest in funds which HL make no charge for other than the platform fee.

TraffordB98

DiamondLil said:

If you want to invest small amounts monthly, have a look at a platform that offers free monthly amounts. II for example. Or invest in funds which HL make no charge for other than the platform fee.

Thank you, I’ll start off investing in funds then rather than shares in individual companies 

[Deleted User]

It's a quirk of the HL app, it will look okay tomorrow.

TraffordB98

Deleted_User said:

It's a quirk of the HL app, it will look okay tomorrow.

Ok thanks a lot haha it’s something I expect over the next few weeks to pick up and when i saw all this negative I thought oh god what have I done 😅
thanks for the tip

Albermarle

With the way you have started , the only people making a profit will be HL .
The best way to invest for most people is to add a regular amount ( say monthly) and the money to go into one or maybe two funds . Then leave well alone for 20 years .
An app will give you the temptation to fiddle about and change things , which will almost certainly reduce your overall profit.

TraffordB98

Albermarle said:

With the way you have started , the only people making a profit will be HL .
The best way to invest for most people is to add a regular amount ( say monthly) and the money to go into one or maybe two funds . Then leave well alone for 20 years .
An app will give you the temptation to fiddle about and change things , which will almost certainly reduce your overall profit.

Thank you, I’ve seen quite a lot of people saying the best way is to consistently invest in funds. Slower process but more consistent returns it appears? I may be wrong. 

AnotherJoe

TraffordB98 said:

Albermarle said:

With the way you have started , the only people making a profit will be HL .
The best way to invest for most people is to add a regular amount ( say monthly) and the money to go into one or maybe two funds . Then leave well alone for 20 years .
An app will give you the temptation to fiddle about and change things , which will almost certainly reduce your overall profit.

Thank you, I’ve seen quite a lot of people saying the best way is to consistently invest in funds. Slower process but more consistent returns it appears? I may be wrong. 

Depends what funds. If it was Woodford for example .....

Albermarle

TraffordB98 said:

Albermarle said:

With the way you have started , the only people making a profit will be HL .
The best way to invest for most people is to add a regular amount ( say monthly) and the money to go into one or maybe two funds . Then leave well alone for 20 years .
An app will give you the temptation to fiddle about and change things , which will almost certainly reduce your overall profit.

Thank you, I’ve seen quite a lot of people saying the best way is to consistently invest in funds. Slower process but more consistent returns it appears? I may be wrong. 

Nothing is guaranteed but mainstream funds normally dilute the risk of investing in individual shares . 
For a new investor a low cost multi asset fund is usually the best bet. Some of the best known are - Vanguard Life Strategy- HSBC global strategy - Legal and General Multi Index - Fidelity multi allocator -