Ask your beginners questions here šŸ£

Your a star !! thank you.

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There is a stocks discussion for AMC here AMC Entertainment šŸæ šŸŽ„ (AMC) - Share chat

Youā€™ll see some chat as the market opens on that forum. Weā€™re a friendly bunch too unlike some other forums that can get a bit aggyā€¦

Freetrade themselves have some resources to start with here:

I would recommend gaining an understanding first at least if you know nothing about stocks and shares before jumping in head first.

Once you have done that, youā€™ll want to consider what to invest in and why. Are you looking to invest for retirement? Are you wanting to invest funds or individual companies?

Itā€™s important to know at this point that situation about stocks like AMC and GME are not normal market behaviour.

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Hereā€™s another decent source (though Iā€™m probably a teeny bit biased because I write for it): Opto | Invest in the Next Big Idea | Stock Market News

Another thing I would recommend doing is adding some stocks you might be interested in to your watch list and keeping an eye on them over a few months. Gives you a chance to get a feel for the market and buy at a good price.

I wouldnā€™t be rushing in with any big buys and I would also stay clear of advice from others on whatā€™s a good investment. Youā€™ll see a wide variety of opinions from people on here about what to invest in. Google is a good place to start researching and try and pick an area that you have an interest in. I like my tech stocks so started out with mainly tech shares, then expanded from there.

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Letā€™s invest in Emmmmmmmieeeeeeeeee <(^-^)>

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These are my current positions - I am just curious if anyone has any recommendations or advice for any ETFs that I could invest in that might round out my portfolio a bit better

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Obviously the usual caveats of ā€œdo your own researchā€ and ā€œIā€™m not giving financial adviceā€ apply, but Iā€™ll tell you some of what I would see as the less risky ETFs with a large number of holdings that I have in my portfolio (I mostly like the iShares ETFs for ease of research, donā€™t really use Vanguard or any of the others):

  • FTSE 250 (MIDD) - a nice addition to the FTSE 100 which I see youā€™ve already got. Itā€™s actually been going down recently so Iā€™ve topped it up quite a bit in my portfolio.
  • S&P 500 (GSPX) - to add a US stocks ETF of 500 holdings to the UK FTSE ones.
  • MSCI Europe (CEUG) - to add 233 European stock holdings to the portfolio for more geographic balance.
  • Some East Asia ETFs in smaller quantities again for geographic balance: MSCI Japan (IJPN - 260 holdings); MSCI Korea (IKOR - 112 holdings) & MSCI Taiwan (ITWN - 87 holdings). I didnā€™t buy an Asia ETF as I donā€™t like China and Singapore for ethical reasons but unfortunately and unavoidably some of my other ETFs do have China in them.

In my answer Iā€™ve concentrated on geographic spread and ETFs with mostly more than 100 holdings. If you were looking for ETFs that pay better dividends, I also have holdings that do that with fewer holdings and are riskier, but that would be a different question to answer.

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Thank you for this - this is exactly what I was looking for Iā€™ll take a look at these suggestions and see which I feel fit best.

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So your portfolio looks fine assuming youā€™re happy with your allocations towards individual stock & ETFā€™s.

The only reason you should need to include FTSE100 into your portfolio is if you feel you want a higher exposure to the top 100 UK listed companies. Theyā€™ll all be included in VWRL so youā€™re overlapping.

Good morning all. Just had to scroll through 970 messages to get to end (is there an easier way to do this?) so forgive me if this has already been covered. I bought some shares early April, wondering when/ how monthly dividends pay out.

Click on the number of post then click jump to

Duh!! Of course! Thank you.

Different companies pay dividends at different times. No one can answer that question without knowing what shares you have. You can look up the shares on a site like Dividendmax, or go to the companies website and look at the investor relations bit

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Thanks. Will check it out

Is there anything you would add for geographical balance or commodity?

So I donā€™t do commodities, a global etf include miners and producers.

Outside of VWRL, without getting very technical, you only need to include area that you want more exposure. Youā€™ll need to factor in risk but you could add some more emerging markets ETFā€™s, specific India or specific China.

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What happens if any nominee shareholder pick up a minority stake in a company.

Example : Jennifer Billings (fictitious name) goes big and buys enough shares to acquire a 20% stake in Royal Mail Group (as an example). Would Freetrade or Freetrade Nominees Ltd (or equivalent for another broker) notify the company.

Itā€™s about the share of the vote as well as the shares acquired, in the majority of companies itā€™s one share one but now all.

In this case Jennifer wouldnā€™t pass the threshold but letā€™s assume she really has a thing for postmen and their callus disregard for the warmth of their legs so buys another 5%.

It would companies job to know who owns what, seeing a huge influx of ownership from a nominee company should trigger someone in compliance to find out who is the beneficiary.

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As NeilB quite correctly says, Jennifer would have to buy another 5% to gain the status of Person of Significant Control (PSC). If the PSC changes, the Company Secretary of that PLC would have to inform Companies House within 14 days, so it is their job to do that. Neil is also quite correct to say that it isnā€™t just % of shares, a PSC is one of three things:

  1. hold more than 25% of shares in the company.
  2. hold more than 25% of the voting rights.
  3. have the right to appoint or remove a majority of the Board of Directors.
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