Advice

First time trying to invest any tips and advice welcome!? :grinning:

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Reserch your stocks, I use Simply Wall Street, a great guide on how to use is here: The Most Important Investment Video I'll Ever Make šŸ’° - YouTube

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Understand how the stock market works before investing. There are a number of good books that will help you with this, but I recommend ā€œA random walk down wall streetā€, or ā€œSmarter Investingā€ by Tim Hale.

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Hi @Andy1 welcome to Freetrade. One of many ways - a fairly unexciting strategy but it works:

Read Smarter Investing or Investing Demystified. Invest monthly in things that are very diverse (eg global index trackers) and low cost (eg cheap ETFs with a low ā€œOCFā€ on cheap platforms like Freetrade). Consider doing this inside tax efficient wrappers (ie ISA, SIPP). Keep going, be patient, donā€™t read the financial media and try not to look at the prices every day :slight_smile:

(But if you will need access to that money in the next few years, or cannot bear any risk of losing any of it, start with your goals, timescales and attitiude to risk, eg by talking to a chartered financial planner).

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I flipped to using Genuine Impact but they both have their pros and cons.

Personally for a first time investor Iā€™d avoid stock picking and slowly grow into that (if you want to.)

Iā€™d focus on why you want to invest. Are you looking for excitement, to beat the market, or to beat your bank.

For excitement or to beat the market youā€™re going to have more bad experiences than good ones at this stage!

If you are looking to beat your bank and put your money to work while taking on some risk, looking at passive trackers and ETFs is a great starting point.

When it comes to investing Iā€™d generally say stick to what you know. The more you understand an industry/sector the easier it is to understand whatā€™s going on and why price movements happen. For a first time investor donā€™t worry about the share price of an investment, itā€™s irrelevant you want to focus on the price movement. e.g. a Ā£10 per share company is in no way better than a Ā£1 a share company.

Finally, the worst thing you can do when stock picking for the first time is get it right! Youā€™ll think youā€™ve found the magic formula and lose way more money in the future :joy:

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I think another great book that is a very easy read and prepares you for the lingo, reading reports etc. is The Naked Trader by Robbie Burns. Itā€™s an entertaining book but at the same time really introduces you to all the fundamentals youā€™d need to know about the stock market. I highly recommend it

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Welcome and hope you have a successful investing journey.

Watching a lot of the BBC news/ BBC World news or and any news on TV regarding world current affairs, companyā€™s and even politics will give you a nice idea what is happening and how its affecting the markets.

I have it left on in the background whilst Iā€™m working on my computer during the day.

Information is a value!

But be careful with this. Itā€™s only interesting to possibly explain past events. No matter how much information you take in and how much you think you know about world events and no matter what the TV pundits say about what happens next in the stock market, you will never be able to accurately and consistently predict the future of the stock market.

So this information has zero value in respects of how well you will do with your investments. If you think it has value and act on your predictions, you are likely to underperform the alternate-reality version of yourself that turned off the TV.

2 posts were split to a new topic: Removed posts 16.06.2019

Iā€™ve just removed a couple of posts from this thread. Please be careful not to recommend individual stocks / ETFs in this community. Thereā€™s more details in our guidelines :raised_hands: