Hey everyone. So just from the offset i am looking for some friendly advice and understand this is not financial advice. Also, please can whoever replies be nice. I some times find that people are sarcastic for no reason in this community. I have some money that I want to invest in an Isa. I have no Idea what stocks to buy. What would be some good safe buys.
Amount Ā£5k.
Ambition. 1 yr at least double it.
Many Thanks in advance 
You canāt have āsafeā and āwant to double it in 1 yearā.
If you want to potentially double your money youāre going to have to take significant risk.
Youāll need to decide what your level of risk tolerance is.
You could put your money in an ETF or fund and probably get a 3% return over a year with some risk to the capital amount.
To aim for a 100% return in a year you will likely need to accept there will be a significant risk of capital loss as well.
I hope you find the right advice as many here do give good tips on how to invest but I would say asking for double your money in a year does invite a bit of ridicule TBH 
Think of the story of the grain of rice and the chess board scenario. This is why your request is impossible to guarantee or we would all be millionaires now.
Now that may sound sarcastic but it is actually the friendliest and best advice someone will give you as regarding double your money in a year and ANYONE who says differently and that you CAN double your money will potentially/likely lose you a lot
Others have posted sensible advice above.
Thanks Hazel 
Thank you. This is what i mean though. Most people on FT are new investors. Literally this is the first time in my life i have started invested and I donāt know anything about anything. So asking questions which may come across as silly is going to be common. Itās not an invitation for ridicule, it is just baby steps and you have to ask questions to learn anything.
Anyway, thank you for taking the time to reply and for your advice. Much appreciated.
Best wishes
Like I said about the grain of rice thing, it isnāt realistic. I wasnāt being rude just saying how people will see that comment but you will still get many helpers as it is a great community.
My suggestion would be the same to all new investors and that would be to spend a few days/weeks reading the forums to gain various points of view.
What is good for one is not good for another person but by reading a mixture you will start to see who you trust more than others and generally you will see a logical view. MOST people in the community are very very helpful and always go out of their way to help or give advice including some of those you think are being sarcastic.
The expert investors set out to try to beat the S&P, theyāre looking for 10% year-on-year, on average. If you want more, you can try the smaller caps, but even there 20-40% is about what you could hope for, if you were lucky. If you want to double it, you need to be basically betting on random unheard of stocks and hoping they suddenly rise in value. Your chance of that happening is approximately zero. Something like 97% of companies are bad investments in the long run, and if you diversify you have a chance that your one good bet will make up for the losses in the others.
Pretty much the entire investment community is expecting a market crash very soon, so thereās almost no chance of anything making 100% return. Itās a pretty sure bet you wonāt be making more than 10% either. The best thing to do, rather than wondering what stock will double your return, is to do some research and recalibrate your expectations first.
Whatever you do, make sure that if a crash does happen and it wipes out half or more of your investment, firstly that you can afford that loss, and secondly that you have spare money to buy in the dip to take advantage of the cheaper prices. After a crash, the market will eventually recover (probably) but that could take a couple of years, and if you realise you do need the money after all and sell at a loss, you will regret it.
Thanks Ralph. Really resonated with your advice. Thanks so much for your time and explaining in such a good way.
About the safest equity exposure you can get is a globally diversified index tracker. These automatically recalibrate regularly. Based on the past few years, you might be looking at around 10% per year if the equity markets remain positive.
I wouldnāt use 2020/2021 as your benchmark for returns - it wasnāt a typical year. Many share prices have risen very quickly, they probably wonāt continue to do so.
If you really want to double your money in 12 months youāll need to find something with potential explosive growth. As noted above this is most likely in small cap businesses. If you choose incorrectly your cash is likely to decrease rapidly rather than increase.
Thank you everyone for such wonderful advice. I really appreciate it.
If you want to double your money with the least risk Iād say put it all on black 
Lol i should have put it all on Mvis. Would have doubled in 2 days.
Bitcoin?
To double your money in one year you need to go for speculative assets like crypto/NFCs. But this means you money could also halve or turn to dust.
The āgold standardā of investment is buying a S&P 500 ETF or fund which yields on average 7-8% per year. The worst downfall you can expect is 20-30% in case of a crash.
To give you a comparison, buying a property and renting it out yields around 5% (a lot of variation here depending on the location) but the downfall is usually small (although it was 20-30% when the crisis hit).
So you need to make a decision based on your risk appetite and long term plans. Forget about becoming rich by investing 5k, you need a lot of luck for that.
Iām pretty new to investing and similar I guess to many in Freetrade who were getting sick of such low savings rates.
My advice would be to do lots of research online and YouTube. There are some very good investing channels on there.
Yes, take a punt in some stock and keep your fingers crossed it works, but expecting that sort of return is a gamble. Only put in what youāre prepared to lose.
Please consider longer term investments; funds and ETFs. Again do the research. If you go with a diverse portfolio (global trackers) and build it over years, youāll do well. Stock ISAs can be used as a great platform for this. Also make use of pensions (SIPPs). The government will add 20% on top of all contributions you make. That really is money for nothing. I realise you canāt touch that money till youāre 55. But itās fun watching it grow. Long term investments are the way. Youāre probably young now and donāt want to think too far ahead, but believe me, from personal experience, your older you will thank you in the future!
Sorry if Iām coming across as boring 
Thanks so much. You donāt sound boring at all. Very sensible. Really appreciate the comment.
Hey Kirran, Iāve now been investing for around 18 months, which means that I saw the bubble at the end of 2019, the crash in March '20 as a result of COVID-19 (i lost 40% on my porfolio overnight) and the rise, fall and rise again of companies since (nothing follows a straight line). Iām thankfully up overall after all of that. But I have taken a few key points away:
If you invest in say S&P 500 ETF, youāre invested in 500 stocks and you donāt need to keep track of the news, AGMS etc of every single one of those stocks and you would have had decent profits this past year.
Thatās another way of diversifying.
I suggest you go with 40% in VWRL (or 20% and another 20% in a low volatility ETF), put 40% in QQQ and 20% in something riskier (a growth stock you like, or crypto, or both).
Then start putting a little sum every month, with the same distribution, to average out the fluctuations.
Remember, itās a long term investment!