New member- advice

[Oliedalbert (Olie D'Albertanson)]

Hi there.
I signed up a couple of weeks ago, not realising I was doing so during the most crazy GMC week…I had no idea what was going on.

Anyway, I have 10k to start investing with, am in it for the long haul but would like a bit of beginners advice.

Am I best to get 10 different stocks with 1000k in each,or five with 2k, or a total mix.

I’m happy to leave some to sit for a long time, but would also like the excitement of trying to find a big growth one and ride to the moon with shredded nerves, so in that respect I’d be happy to put aside some for mote speculative investments.

But if anyone has any advice I’d be thankful.
Olive

[zaccharles]

Hi Olive,

I recommend having a read of Freetrade’s Invest Hub, especially the Get started investing section which has heaps of info on the basics and building your portfolio.

Specific to your question on how many stocks to buy, one of the latter guides on the invest hub is about deversifying which talks about this.

You could also sign up to the (Honey newsletter](Honey by Freetrade) for daily market stories. On the same page is the Weekend Read, which is a fun article once a week (previous weeks can be found here).

Take your time, have fun!

[Oliedalbert (Olie D'Albertanson)]

Thank you that. I’d read a lot on the need for diversifying, but not seen the best means of breaking this down. This is really useful, so thank you

[Eden (E)]

Is this an ISA or a GIA?

My advice would be to dump it all or most of it in a well known global tracker like VWRL, then take the time to do a bit of reading.

The reason for saying that is it gives you time to learn what the different investment types are and do a bit of reading without feeling like you have pressure to invest uninvested money. VWRL or a similar global type index fund is well know and well managed I don’t think anyone would say you could go that wrong with something like that.

I think doing something like that as a beginner will remove any of that pressure to invest especially if you don’t know what in. That gives you plenty of time to look over the links @zaccharles provided, ask questions, and decide how you want to consider investing and how much time you want to put into it as those kind of things will determine where you really want to focus.

Something to think about at least

[Oliedalbert (Olie D'Albertanson)]

That’s really useful, thank you. I have opened an ISA.

I’ve done a lot of reading over the last couple of months about different strategies and managing risk etc but want to give myself the best opportunity long terms. I want to actively enjoy it, and by that I mean immerse myself in it. I’m really enjoying reading all the business news and have signed up to loads of websites offering different nuggets, but you’re right, I’ve got to decide exactly what I want to do .

Really appreciate the comment

[AdamL (Adam)]

Diversification - how many stocks is too many?

That’s fair enough, but what’s the magic behind the 40 number? As I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you, diversification isn’t a out how many stocks you own, it’s about how similar your stocks are to one another. I used to be at around 50 with about six different US banks. I’m now down at 27 but axeing 4 banks to being me down to two hasn’t done any great violence to my diversity profile.

This was a good discussion, although everyone’s got their own answer. With no commission it’s not really an issue to chop and change.