The devil is in the details of what this means. Too many people here pick up stock because others say it is a good stock. This is not research, this is not too different from acting on gossip. Past stock price is not a great guide to future stock price. Too many people think things like āthe future is Hydrogenā and then invest in any company that suggests they are doing something with Hydrogen. Just because a theme might be great doesnāt mean that the stocks you pick in that space might be great. And for people who claim that all is going well: well it is probably true that all is going well for them. But there is something called survivorship bias.
Some people who have invested in the good times or have by luck invested in a stock that rockets (last year was a good year) will get super shocked in ānormalā times. I expect that more than 50% of stock pickers will lose money and many will lose all of it. So invest only what you can afford to lose.
Your best bet to start off with is to play safe and do at least as well (or badly) as the general market. Buy a tracker fund. For ideas read the beginning Investment guides on Freetrade. (Under the Learn menu) . Look up the Passive Investor portfolio thread on this forum. Then come back with specific questions.
If your free stock is preventing you from being down then your portfolio really hasnāt tanked properly A portfolio can go down an awful lot in a down period but as long as it is a diverse portfolio it should eventually climb back up.
As others have said look at longer trends and make a judgement on that but obviously things can/do change so not advice.
Unpopular opinion: donāt do your own research*.
Follow what the actual research says, you are very unlikely to beat the market, so save yourself a whole load of time, effort, money and worry, and just buy the market. (Low cost, globally diversified).
Iām a newb too and began trading with Ā£10 here and there, then observed my stocks (mainly tanking). I quickly realised that I had to do more research than I was, but have not sold those penny shares that tanked. If one of them rockets it will pay for the losses on the rest.
Iām learning not to sell on the dips, but with companies I am confident with, buy more on the dips! It averages the cost of the shares making losses appear lower and profits, as long as the shares grow, will be maximised.
The charts on FreeTrade are a bit tricky because when you look at any time period the price axis is scaled to fit in the largest price fluctuation in that time period. The price fluctuations that you are seeing on a daily basis are often not visible on monthly or annual charts.
I am now seeing dips as opportunities to buy healthy stocks and imagining the market as a set of lungs that breathe in and out, or like waves on the beach as the tide come in.
Good luck with it all and be patient.
As others say here and I believe a Warren Buffett quote - Time in the market beats timing the market.
I opened this account back in 2018 however I used it for 5 minutes, then left.
Since all this craze about GME etc and seeing how low the savings account rates are Iām looking to start investing so I can hope to get a better return that would I do right now putting into a fixed rate savings account.
As the title suggest Iām very much a novice and Iām happy to step back and take some time to learn all the fundamentals etc (Like what is a market cap and its relevance towards a share price?)
Does anyone have any advise on books/videos/websites/podcasts etc that they could recommend so I can gain some further knowledge on the fundamentals?
I am by no means an expert or a financial advisor, so this is just how I do it;
Invest what you are comfortable with every month into a low-cost index fund.
Itās about time in the market, NOT timing the market.
Ideally, you want to have an investment horizon of 10 yrs, and the longer the better.
Resist the urge to tinker.
For books there is an entire thread dedicated to it here
Itās great that this has peaked your interest into investing, nowā¦ pretend you never heard to GME or WSB for a while, trust me.
I think investing is probably one of the single most important things any person can do to improve their long term financial health and build financial wealth for their family. Everyone should be investing even a little.
But investing for the long term is the best way to approach things imo as a beginer trying to hit mene stocks and hype stocks I believe is a disaster waiting to happen.
Just IMHOā¦ but I would suggest taking the time to learn the ropes. I think subscribing to something like āSimply Wall Stā could really benefit you. It uses infographics to simply break down many of the fundamental metrics used to value stocks. It helps to quickly get a grasp on things like P/E, P/B, EPS etc. The things that help you to evaluate if and why you want to invest in a stock. I would subscribe to a few investing podcasts to familiarise yourself with different ideas, approaches and the terminology. Slowly try to get a feel for what you want your investing style to be - simply put āvalueā or āgrowthā. Or how much of a mix of the two. Only you will be able to determine this based on your appetite towards risk. Start slowly until you know what youāre doing. Itās hard to time the market, so read about DCA and how this can help a novice. Be very wary of stock tips on here! Research everything yourself. IMHO, look to build a portfolio thatās highly diversified across multiple sectors with no one holding more than 5% of the total value. So if you inevitably make mistakes or are unlucky with timing, it will hopefully make it less painful. Good luck!
Trust me I have no intention to go for the all these hyped up āmeme stocksā.
It was more the mention in the news for me about the investment side in general which peaked my interest back into investing as I currently have money sat in a Savings account which is effectively useless with current rates!
Iām sure to going to have a look at what you provided and then go from there!
Iāve been managing my stocks and shares savings since May 2019, didnt have one before.
Had never heard of FT until I did, and thanks to FT my minimal investment power is still of worth. A year later Iām still here.
I started with a very minimal amount (nothing i wasnt willing to lose). Firstly I got to grips with the app itself. Knowing how to navigate and what the app can do is very useful. I put some money down on shares that were priced low (no doubt thanks to pandemic).
I saw the numbers move and made some sales for short term profit. Reinvested. Deposited more.
While the percentages were jumping around in the background I spent time reading various resources. Freetrade forum, simplywall.st, even WSB (take everything you read on there as a probable troll). This was all in a GIA.
As your confidence and knowledge grows so will your investment strategy. If you dont already know about ISAs and what they can offer then this is a logical point of research also. In doing so you may realise some more fundamental changes are beneficial too, such as changing bank or using a cash ISA instead of standard savings account.
This is not financial advice, simply a personal experience that may help guide your journey.
Iāve now fallen into a similar line as many. Majority of portfolio in ETFs/bonds and smaller amount in company stocks which are more for fun (for me). At present itās a 75 / 25 split as I learn alot through active trading and the money involved I am prepared to loose (so far in green though )
I joined Freetrade a few months ago, I was in the green for about a week and have been in the red since! Iāve been carefully researching who to invest in and I know the market has taken a bit of a dip recently. Just wondering if anyone has any success stories with Freetrade they could share? I just see lots of new people in the same boat as me and it would be good to know that if I hold out for a few years with my shares things might turn around!
The past couple of months have been particularly choppy with more uncertainty cast by covid amongst other things, and December seems to typically be a slower month naturally.
Youāll find a lot of the saying ātime in the market beats timing the marketā - stick it out, invest what you can sensibly afford regularly and youāll likely see improvement (itās not guaranteed, but more likely over time).
I started investing with Freetrade in May 2020, have invested at regular intervals what has been affordable over that period (approx 4.5k) and currently up about 1k. Thereās been plenty of up and down through that time and itās not alway plain sailing!
It depends on what those shares are. This is not a āsure fire winā situation.
If you invest in duds - doesnāt matter how long you hold them: it wonāt do you much good.
You improve your chances considerably by investing in an ETF that tracks a major index - that way you do at least as well as the index. For ideas look up and read the articles in the Learn section of the Freetrade website.
@Schkempo thank you for this, itās really helpful and gives me hope that things will improve! Iāve got a good portfolio I think, just havenāt seen any upwards movement so far. I also need to learn to cope with the dips better and not panic!
How do I move my stocks from Gia to my isa account in hind site I should have started an isa account straight away but being a newby just not sure about what I was doing
I canāt recommend any books on the stock market but I can recommend the book (comic) that made me feel differently about the economy and got me into buying shares.
Economix by Michael Goodwin. Itās a really easy and quick read and the praise speaks for itselfā¦
A portfolio can go down an awful lot in a down period but as long as it is a diverse portfolio it should eventually climb back up.
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