Ask your beginners questions here šŸ£

EPS is simply =Net profit/Number of outstanding shares. It is applicable for every single profit making company (i.e. you will not see Tesla having any EPS). This in no shape or form represents the payment a company makes toward shareholdersā€™ brokerage accounts. For example, Amazonā€™s EPS in the most recent quarter was $5.07 but there is no way any investors will get a penny out of it.

Therefore, the dividend yield is the only way for companies to give cash to investors.

Correct, assuming a company is profit-making, it will either have both EPS and dividend yield (Microsoft, Apple, McDonaldā€™s, etc.), or just have EPS (Amazon, Netflix, Alibaba, etc.). The former list simply pays dividends, whereas the latter does not.

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I see, I suppose itā€™s a added bonus if the company does become profitable. Will we recieve these into our accounts too?

Nope :slight_smile:

All you will receive is the dividends, which are usually announced months before being paid. EPS is just an indicator to show you how much profit each of your shares has earned for a given period, does not affect any investors at all.

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I see, thanks. I just signed up today. Im new to trading. I was going to use plus500 but Iā€™ve heard bad things about that app so closed my account

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Feel free to ask any further questions should they arise. This is what this topic is for. And hope you will have better experience with Freetrade!

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Once Iā€™ve got passed the queue, what other steps do I need to undertake? You have access no doubt, maybe you can tell me

Plus500 only do CFDs which are an entirely different thing to proper investment

This is a good read explaining them

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Thanks very much Jeffā€¦ appreciate it!

They basically mean the same thing. A stock is ownership of a certificate of ANY company. A share refers to the ownership certificates of a particular company.

At least to my understanding.

What are some good stocks to invest in with Ā£100, and is there oppotunity to make any reasonable gains on this amount of money on a monthly basis. thanks, just got on the app today!

Hey Thomas, it is against the community guidelines to give suggestions for investing because people much make decisions for themselves and be liable for the consequences. So you wonā€™t get anything like ā€œinvest in X and you will be fineā€ :slight_smile:

However, if you do not have ample experience in investing, you may consider ETFs like FTSE 100 or FTSE 250. Should you have invested Ā£100 in the former 10 years ago today, you would have had it valued at circa Ā£170 today with some decent 2 to 3 per cent annual dividend as well. The latter would have been about Ā£300 with some 1 to 2 per cent dividend.

But remember, past performance is not an indication of future and investing in the market will not guarantee reasonable returns within less than years (even after five years they are not guaranteed, just significantly more likely).

The safest decision would be to find a few ETFs you like (even those FTSE 100 and FTSE 250) and keep investing your spare cash in them (on the proviso that you do not need that cash in short run). Reinvesting your dividends will also be a wise decision as it will help to gain the benefit of cumulative growth.

You can read other usersā€™ investment stories and strategies (NOT recommendations) here.

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Iā€™d second etfs (far less risky than individual stocks), but also look at this for the long term. It must be long term (years, decades) to make any money.

In answer to your question, no you will not make lots of money from Ā£100, but yes save Ā£100 every month for a few years and you will start to accumulate capital, which is how you make money. This is long term, and long term you will also be able to up that amount, but start now even if you can only afford 100. Eventually your investments will make you more than you can put in.

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thanks vlad, ill have to read through the guidelines once more just to be safe.

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when viewing your portfolio is the percentages on the your investents section the percentage rise/fall from the time you purchased the stock? thanks.

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This is correct :slight_smile:

And if you buy the same thing on different days paying different prices, everything will be averaged.

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awsome thanks!

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Do you earn dividends on an index like ftse 100 or do you have to own shares of a specific company?

And how can you work out how much you will earn in dividends based on the amount of stock you own

Hi :no_good_man:

Iā€™m selling shares soon, my question is: is it worth selling them before an ex dividend date or after, accounting for the dividend income?

Being a complete newbie, Iā€™m assuming a share price will drop after the ex dividend date?

You will get your fair proportion of dividends from each of the (in your example) FTSE 100 company.

You can find the past information in the index fundā€™s Key Information Document (for Ā£ISF, which is iSharesā€™ FTSE 100 fund). On the left side, you can see the ā€œDistributionsā€ section, here are the historical dividends paid. If you would like to, you can see the last few yearsā€™ performances monthly and see the average payment, which you could expect not to change too much.

Stocks generally rise before the ex-dividend date and fall by the amount of dividend after the ex-div. It is up to you whether you want to sell, but most likely the market will have precisely calculated the balanced share price. Therefore, even if you are lucky to have a nil transaction commission, your stamp duty will probably keep you in the red overall.

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This is very helpful, thank you!

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