As this is all new to me I wanted to run this past you to see if it makes sense.
Is there any benefit to Selling and Buying back or am I just losing on the spread (difference between the Sell rate & the Buy rate), example:
I buy 100 shares of KYJ @ Ā£55 each. Total outlay Ā£5500 for 100 shares
The price rises and and it then looks like it will drop because a of shooting star indicator.
I sell 100 shares @ Ā£60 each. Total income Ā£6000 (Profit Ā£500)
The price does drop and I buy back the shares @ Ā£53. Total outlay Ā£5300 for 100 shares.
Does this mean I just made another Ā£200 as I originally had 100 shares for Ā£5500 but now have the same for Ā£5300, it doesnāt does it, itās just freeing up cashflow right, itās not actual profit is it?
So now the shares rise again to Ā£59 and I close making another profit of Ā£600
If I had just kept the shares from the original purchase and not done the sell and buy back thing then I would have only made Ā£400 right (Ā£59-Ā£55 x 100 shares = Ā£400)
Maybe by writing it down I can see the answer that I have in fact made Ā£1100 which is much more than just hanging on to the shares over a longer period, but still good to get some views on this and if it works in reality.
In reality, however, most people lose money trading like this. If it is that easy to look at a chart and know when a share is going to go up and down - then weād all be millionaires.
The best advice I can give is buy and hold and donāt try timing the market. It always ends in tears.
If you do, make sure itās inside a tax wrapper. Otherwise look up ābed and breakfastingā which can become accounting hell if you have to account for CGT.
Yeah I wondered about the 0.5% when I made my purchase the other night. I couldnāt see it on the share certificate (or whatever it is called). I did reach out the Freetrade Contact us but appreciate theyāre very busy. Probably a good idea to ask those questions here:
Is the 0.5% just on UK stocks not US? Or is it on the sale not the purchase? I bought NIO listed on the NYSE.
Well, yes, what you describe will work if your guesses about the future direction of the stock price are correct. But thatās a big āifā! You have to be able to ride the price of a stock up, jump off at the top, wait for it to drop, know when to get back on, and repeat the cycle every time. Frankly, I just donāt believe you can know short-term movements in advance accurately enough to make it work.
The reason buy-and-hold usually works is that over the long term (years), the market overall does on average move up-and-to-the-right. Betting on shorter-term fluctuations within the overall trend means taking increasing risks that a stock might not behave in the way you think it will. (And even buy-and-hold wonāt always work, there are crashes and there are periods when prices slide sideways without going up or downā¦ there are no guarantees in the stock market, and that definitely includes the technical analysts telling you about shooting stars!)
Also, youāll usually lose a bit to āfrictionā on every trade. Even if you pay Ā£0 commission as you do at Freetrade, you will still lose out on the buy-sell spread (the price you think of as the share price is usually a mid-price, in reality you normally pay slightly more when buying and receive slightly less when selling than you think you will) and possibly pay foreign exchange fees or stamp duty tax.
The 0.5% stamp duty is on most UK stocks. Thereās no equivalent on US stocks. No idea on other countriesā stocks; we will have to learn as we go along. It is levied on the buyer, not the seller.
There is none on funds, but some funds have a transaction fee (also paid at the time you buy).