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Which stocks and shares ISA best for me?

I think I'll be opening a stocks and shares ISA to invest £400/m. I'll be buying shares myself for mid to long term keeping. And occasionally I might go for a day trade or a swing trade. Barclays looks good on paper but is it going to be the best for me? I mean are there any hidden things I should know about? I have a Halifax stocks and shares ISA at the moment and very often it won't let me buy shares as they don't qualify. I have not had that problem with my Hargreaves and Lansdown share account but then I haven't done much trading. Is Barclays going to be limiting my choice of shares? Which platform is best iyo?

Comments

  • CatLady13
    CatLady13 Posts: 87
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    Have you had a read through of some of the similar threads on this board where some of the more knowledgeable members have suggested it is best to stick to multi asset funds rather than shares?

    You haven!!!8217;t mentioned how much you currently have in your ISA but if it!!!8217;s a low figure ie under 5 figures, then probably best to stick with one or two funds.

    If you haven!!!8217;t browsed through a lot of the threads then I suggest you do as there!!!8217;s a lot of useful info to be gleaned.
  • A_T
    A_T Posts: 959
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    tadaska wrote: »
    I think I'll be opening a stocks and shares ISA to invest £400/m. I'll be buying shares myself for mid to long term keeping. And occasionally I might go for a day trade or a swing trade. Barclays looks good on paper but is it going to be the best for me? I mean are there any hidden things I should know about? I have a Halifax stocks and shares ISA at the moment and very often it won't let me buy shares as they don't qualify. I have not had that problem with my Hargreaves and Lansdown share account but then I haven't done much trading. Is Barclays going to be limiting my choice of shares? Which platform is best iyo?

    £400 is a small sum to be buying shares with - a disproportionately large amount will be eaten up by trading costs whichever platform you use (unless it's a free one but even then there are often hidden costs like charging for making a deposit into a trading account).
  • Thrugelmir
    Thrugelmir Posts: 89,546
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    tadaska wrote: »
    And occasionally I might go for a day trade

    Been tried numerous times before. What do you know that the market doesn't?
  • tadaska
    tadaska Posts: 57
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    CatLady13 wrote: »
    Have you had a read through of some of the similar threads on this board where some of the more knowledgeable members have suggested it is best to stick to multi asset funds rather than shares?

    You haven!!!8217;t mentioned how much you currently have in your ISA but if it!!!8217;s a low figure ie under 5 figures, then probably best to stick with one or two funds.

    If you haven!!!8217;t browsed through a lot of the threads then I suggest you do as there!!!8217;s a lot of useful info to be gleaned.

    I did read a bit about it. I'll have another look into it in more detail. But I want to learn about trading shares and thought if I was buying myself that would speed up my learning process and help keep me motivated. At the moment I have about £6k invested. More like £5k if I sold now. If think Trump is to blame :D I should recover.
  • tadaska
    tadaska Posts: 57
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    Thrugelmir wrote: »
    Been tried numerous times before. What do you know that the market doesn't?

    Absolutely nothing. There are a lot of YT videos where people claim to be successful day/swing traders. So I am watching them and trying to learn all technicalities so I can decide for myself if there is any merit to their claims. I did make a swing trade with Tesla shares and made a small profit but I'm putting this down to the beginners luck. I'm not going to try it again until I've learned everything there is to learn. Even then I'll only trade paper-money to see how it goes.
  • A_T
    A_T Posts: 959
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    tadaska wrote: »
    Absolutely nothing. There are a lot of YT videos where people claim to be successful day/swing traders. So I am watching them and trying to learn all technicalities so I can decide for myself if there is any merit to their claims. I did make a swing trade with Tesla shares and made a small profit but I'm putting this down to the beginners luck. I'm not going to try it again until I've learned everything there is to learn. Even then I'll only trade paper-money to see how it goes.

    be careful day trading is like betting on horse racing
  • tadaska
    tadaska Posts: 57
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    A_T wrote: »
    be careful day trading is like betting on horse racing

    I've noticed. It's something I want to learn about over the following months but I won't try it any time soon if ever. I'm more interested in longer period investments in shares and hopefully getting better returns than funds. Still a lot to learn.

    I'm still looking to see what you guys know about the share/stock choice/availability on different UK platforms. I think a good portion of my investments might be in the US stocks.
  • Prism
    Prism Posts: 3,794
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    tadaska wrote: »
    I've noticed. It's something I want to learn about over the following months but I won't try it any time soon if ever. I'm more interested in longer period investments in shares and hopefully getting better returns than funds. Still a lot to learn.

    I think its a good thing to learn how it all works but there is almost no chance that you would get better returns than a fund taking the same level of risk. They have teams of researchers working to get the best results and even then its difficult to beat the index.

    If you want to do it for fun than allocate a small percentage for shares and the rest for funds.
  • TBC15
    TBC15 Posts: 1,446
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    IMHO If you are fishing for advice here, you're not up to the job of buying individual shares or day trading.
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