Buying shares (complete newbie)

If you check some of the recent old threads, we've had a couple asking exactly the same question, there are loads of suggestions about web sites; books; video courses. etc etc.

dirk_ wrote: »

Evening guys

Having recently paid off our mortgage we are now looking to make some investments in the stock market and am looking for some newbie advice.

I have been doing some reading on possible up coming IPO's and am interested in investing when they come up

Snapchat
Pure gym
Pinterest
Uber

Also looked at Amazon, Tencent and Alababa (Baba)

At them moment we have about £10k saved and I want to invest the lot and then start buying between £500 - £1000 shares every month or 2

Can anyone offer advice on an online Brooker and any other thoughts on the above

Thanks in advance

Looking at that lot, I think you'd be best off investing In a fund (or Investment trust or similar) that specialised in technology shares, so you indirectly held all those and similar, you'd have more chances if access to IPOs and regular investments could generally be made under a low cost scheme, lower than buying shares separately.

Do,some searching for specialist funds and see if you can find some that look like they cover what you'd buy.

Many posters here will advise you take a very general less risky focus and have a general fund, but if you do want to specialise and take a punt on a section of industry, then a fund is a better way of doing this unless you want to take the really high risk option of betting on a very small number of companies. It's still high risk, but less so than just picking Three or four companies (and argiably you might like to buy 20 or 30 anyway but that's impractical unless you have a lot more cash than you do.)

EDIT: I see I've repeated what Bowlhead has said, one thing to add to that, if you do decide to buy individual shares then it's important to use a broker like TD who let you buy and sell in the same currency, e.g. Let's say you sell your Alibaba shares and buy Uber shares, you want to be doing that all in US $ rather than have the price converted to Pounds in between.

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Rather than stockpicking and buying individual tech stocks, you could consider something like the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust. It's a £5bn investment company that invests in other companies with a management fee of under half a percent per year, and you'll see the name of some of your favourites within its top ten holdings:

http://www.bailliegifford.com/individual-investors/literature-library/funds/investment-trusts/scottish-mortgage/scottish-mortgage-monthly-factsheet/

Fuller list of its holdings as of this summer is here: http://www.bailliegifford.com/individual-investors/literature-library/funds/investment-trusts/portfolio-valuations/scottish-mortgage-valuation-31-august-2016/

The trust is listed on the London stock exchange so you could buy via any broker that deals on the London market, such as http://www.x-o.co.uk ; alternatively they operate their own investment plan facility where you can buy via them inside or outside a S&S ISA without needing a broker account: http://www.bailliegifford.com/individual-investors/funds/scottish-mortgage-investment-trust/how-to-invest/investment-trust-share-planisa/

If you want to buy some of those shares you listed directly as individual holdings you will need a broker that deals on the US stockmarkets, not just a bargain basement one that deals in London listed shares only. I have an S&S ISA with http://www.tddirectinvesting.co.uk who are fine.

Bowlhead, a question on Scottish Mortgage IT please:
is this a cost effective way of investing in monthly with Cavendish online via Fidelity, I understand that there's the 0.25% platform fee, 0.5% stamp duty (is this on each monthly drip feed?) and 0.1% spread fee. Or, in terms of cost effectiveness, would it be better to invest in a lump-sum?
I was thinking of investing in several IT's for a small amount (i.e. 4 or 5 x £25pcm) with Cavendish via Fidelity, or is this a bonkers idea?