£500 to invest in shares today (First timer)

UKresident1234

Hi,

Have never bought a share in my life. Looking at the market I want to put in £500 today .. will add funds into the Trading 212 app as I have an account with cash isas there.

So what to buy? Thinking Apple and Nvidia (which if tariff deals are worked out might surge)  .. but am clueless.

Also I want to cash them out quick once they rise, not a long term thing.

Any tips for a newbie. What would you do if it was your £500?

Thanks in advance!

Mark_d

So you are after a short term gamble rather than an investment.  Have you thought out using a service such as Betfair Exchange?

People can have reasonable estimates on how shares will do in the 5-year plus timeframe but if you're looking for a quick gamble then your punt could be as good as anyone else's.

Aylesbury_Duck

UKresident1234 said:

Hi,

Have never bought a share in my life. Looking at the market I want to put in £500 today .. will add funds into the Trading 212 app as I have an account with cash isas there.

So what to buy? Thinking Apple and Nvidia (which if tariff deals are worked out might surge)  .. but am clueless.

Also I want to cash them out quick once they rise, not a long term thing.

Any tips for a newbie. What would you do if it was your £500?

Thanks in advance!

Easy tip: Don't.  The two bold parts of your post are why.  1. Never invest in something you don't remotely understand, and 2. Investing is a long term game.  

If it was that easy to make a quick win from £500, don't you think everyone would be doing it?  If it was my £500 I'd feed £100 a day into something like one of Vanguard's lifestrategy funds for the next five days.  It's how I started, and built up the amounts over time.  I've got about £300k in S&S ISAs as a result, with very good overall growth.  No knee-jerking, either.  I continued to feed money in throughout the covid crash and am doing so now.

UKresident1234

Mark_d said:

So you are after a short term gamble rather than an investment.  Have you thought out using a service such as Betfair Exchange?

People can have reasonable estimates on how shares will do in the 5-year plus timeframe but if you're looking for a quick gamble then your punt could be as good as anyone else's.

lol betfair .. thanks for input and advice!

UKresident1234

Aylesbury_Duck said:

UKresident1234 said:

Hi,

Have never bought a share in my life. Looking at the market I want to put in £500 today .. will add funds into the Trading 212 app as I have an account with cash isas there.

So what to buy? Thinking Apple and Nvidia (which if tariff deals are worked out might surge)  .. but am clueless.

Also I want to cash them out quick once they rise, not a long term thing.

Any tips for a newbie. What would you do if it was your £500?

Thanks in advance!

Easy tip: Don't.  The two bold parts of your post are why.  1. Never invest in something you don't remotely understand, and 2. Investing is a long term game.  

If it was that easy to make a quick win from £500, don't you think everyone would be doing it?  If it was my £500 I'd feed £100 a day into something like one of Vanguard's lifestrategy funds for the next five days.  It's how I started, and built up the amounts over time.  I've got about £300k in S&S ISAs as a result, with very good overall growth.  No knee-jerking, either.  I continued to feed money in throughout the covid crash and am doing so now.

Thanks for advice, I appreciate it!

InvesterJones

If you've never bought shares before it's a bit of a strange choice to suddenly jump into day-ish trading. Chances are very high you will lose money. Investment on the other hand is quite different.

masonic

What I would do is invest in a share with the ticker ACWI. Job done.

eskbanker

UKresident1234 said:

Thinking Apple and Nvidia (which if tariff deals are worked out might surge)  .. but am clueless.

You'd have had some beginner's luck that might have (misleadingly) convinced you of it being a viable strategy - Apple was up 11% in the four hours since you posted that!

UKresident1234

eskbanker said:

UKresident1234 said:

Thinking Apple and Nvidia (which if tariff deals are worked out might surge)  .. but am clueless.

You'd have had some beginner's luck that might have (misleadingly) convinced you of it being a viable strategy - Apple was up 11% in the four hours since you posted that!

should've have gone with my gut 

fwor

UKresident1234 said:

should've have gone with my gut 

The problem with that way of thinking is that the decision which caused the partial recovery in the US markets (the decision to "pause" the extreme tariffs for 90 days or more) happened long after you initially posed the question.

So you are crediting yourself with anticipating an event that you couldn't possibly have known would happen. It generally doesn't help to look back like that.

Baldytyke88

If your logic is that they have gone down and they will come back up, Astrazenica is today's top faller in the FTSE 100, or are you wanting a USA stock