Buying shares

[Pvapour]

Never done before but have some spare cash doing nothing, fancy a long term place to put it..

Want to keep it as throw away money and not spreading so fancy Tesla & one of the new food farm producers.

How do you buy shares? and is there a good app to watch them by?

Tia

Edited by Pvapour on Friday 25th September 07:01

[kiethton]

There are a number of ways to buy shares which come at different costs:

There are specialists like Hargreaves Landsdown or AJ Bell where you need to open an account but even your bank will be able to buy them on your behalf and open a separate account (more expensive however). Make sure you're opening/buying in an ISA (if able to etc.) to save from the tax man.

While each platform will allow you to monitor there are a number of better ways - I have a bloomberg terminal which is brilliant but that's stupidly expensive overkill - for PA investing Google finance is just about the only place to show live pricing for free while www.investegate.com will show you all RNS newsflow.

[anonymous-user]

It doesn't appear to make sense to be looking "long term" with "throw away money".

Long term sounds like "investing" for which you'd probably be better looking at a low cost equity fund that you can buy and forget.

Thow away money sounds like trading/gambling where you need to keep an eye on things from day to day or hour to hour to spot opportunities.

[BlackG7R]

I use Trading 212 to play around with a few spare pounds on shares.

Simple to use and free.

HL's fees take quite a large chunk when buying and selling if you're only playing with small amounts.

[vulture1]

Pvapour said:

Never done before but have some spare cash doing nothing, fancy a long term place to put it..

Want to keep it as throw away money and not spreading so fancy Tesla & one of the new food farm producers.

How do you buy shares? and is there a good app to watch them by?

Tia

Edited by Pvapour on Friday 25th September 07:01

PM sent

[goldieandblackie]

I also use Trading 212 and highly recommend them.

[Scootersp]

Trading 212 a mate uses, fees are cheap but it can mean you mess with things too much.

I have HL and like the format but yes trade fees are high, but I've never had any problems buying or selling (some platforms delay things)

I only started up a few months ago, you need to really be careful if you know you are prone to risky decisions, it's quite a test of you as much as the markets. I'm risk adverse but you can chase stuff or beat yourself up over bad and good decisions (ie if you made a good decision I should have put more in etc)

Try and have a logical reason for buying the stock. Tesla is arguably a bandwagon right now so you can like the stock/company but it can still be over valued, not saying it is/isn't but there is talk!

I 'watch listed' various companies at the start of and August and loads are down, no money invested just hunches or tips from on here. One was Shell recovering from the post covid blip, but from August it's just been further decline (15% I think). Goes without saying some sectors are really suffering, I think the market is generally more volatile at present, caution advised!

[I 8 a 4RE]

Because it doesn’t read like you’re in the top 1% imma leave this here:

https://www.tradeciety.com/24-statistics-why-most-...

Do yourself a favour and buy some nice aggressive funds and let the Pros handle it.

[Benbay001]

There is so much you need to know before buying shares in individual companies in order to not throw money down the drain.

If you dont have a year or more to spend learning, i suggest you just buy an index fund and hold it.

Unless youre prepared to treat it as a gamble, in which case, fill your boots.

[Phooey]

Hope the op doesn't mind me hijacking his thread

Just curious as to if you can buy or sell shares when the markets are closed? For example: I bought some shares through HL last week and just logged in to see the price. I am up approx 4%. I actually don't want to sell them yet but just curious as to how it works if I decided to sell on a Saturday/Sunday or after market trading hours. I can see on HL the Sell and Buy price but surely that was the last price at close of business on Friday. So am I correct in thinking if I put instructions in to sell that they would be sold at Mondays opening price, which of course could be different to Fridays closing price?

Cheers

[dingg]

Phooey said:

Hope the op doesn't mind me hijacking his thread

Just curious as to if you can buy or sell shares when the markets are closed? For example: I bought some shares through HL last week and just logged in to see the price. I am up approx 4%. I actually don't want to sell them yet but just curious as to how it works if I decided to sell on a Saturday/Sunday or after market trading hours. I can see on HL the Sell and Buy price but surely that was the last price at close of business on Friday. So am I correct in thinking if I put instructions in to sell that they would be sold at Mondays opening price, which of course could be different to Fridays closing price?

Cheers

Yh, the market in which they're traded in has to be open for you to buy or sell. First thing in a morning they may open with a wider spread so the bid and offer may not be to your advantage.

[Phooey]

dingg said:

Yh, the market in which they're traded in has to be open for you to buy or sell. First thing in a morning they may open with a wider spread so the bid and offer may not be to your advantage.

That's what I thought - thanks. I thought so but just couldn't get my head around it. It makes sense, because info (good or bad) could come out about the company after closing hours which could obviously effect the price?

So just to confirm - if I put actioned a Sell today (Saturday) my shares wouldn't actually be sold until first thing on the next market open day - Monday?

Thanks

[Bluesgirl]

Benbay001 said:

There is so much you need to know before buying shares in individual companies in order to not throw money down the drain.

If you dont have a year or more to spend learning, i suggest you just buy an index fund and hold it.

Unless youre prepared to treat it as a gamble, in which case, fill your boots.

This. 100%. If you lose a few hundred or a few thousand in your first week of trading it'll dampen your enthusiasm big time.

Read Smarter Investing by Tim Hale for info on index funds and why they're a good idea.

[bitchstewie]

I don't invest in index funds I use investment trusts but I'd thoroughly agree that backing the field rather than the horse is probably a better idea for most people than trying to identify and hold individual shares.

Easy to look at the Amazon's and Tesla's and think "if only" but you also have to think whether you'd have held during the really bad times which is probably easier with trusts or indexes or funds.

[Pit Pony]

I've traded shares in my SIPP for 10 years.

I was doing Okay until 1st March. When I bought some shares in a company that is in aerospace.

[Pit Pony]

I've traded shares in my SIPP for 10 years.

I was doing Okay until 1st March. When I bought some shares in a company that is in aerospace.

[Pvapour]

Thanks for info, i’ll check out links, its literally just to play as our future is already taken care of.

Thanks.

[anonymous-user]

Pvapour said:

Never done before but have some spare cash doing nothing, fancy a long term place to put it..

Want to keep it as throw away money and not spreading so fancy Tesla & one of the new food farm producers.

How do you buy shares? and is there a good app to watch them by?

Tia

Edited by Pvapour on Friday 25th September 07:01

Put a suit on and go speak to professionals who offer the 1st meeting free in your local city, download a finance app that contains ads and you will soon get a feel for dealing costs but as mentioned above your taxation plays a big part on how to hold the shares

[Scootersp]

Phooey said:

So just to confirm - if I put actioned a Sell today (Saturday) my shares wouldn't actually be sold until first thing on the next market open day - Monday?

Thanks

HL has a option for you to input a price to sell on the next opening, ie arbitrarily you noticed you went from 95 to 100 by Friday, you could put in a sell order for 98 say and if it opens above that it would sell if not it wouldn't, it's literally a one off yes/no thing, and stops you selling at 92 if that's the opening.

Just went and looked it up, that's the so called fill or kill option, the other option is a 90 days sell price that again you pick which would be actioned on reaching that. Lots of these can be (in my limited knowledge) what causes 'pull backs' on a upward trending stock, ie as it goes up then these automatic sell orders come in and can temporarily stifle the climb (definitely oversimplifying here I think)

[anonymous-user]

Pvapour said:

How do you buy shares? and is there a good app to watch them by?

Tia

I have a stocks and shares ISA with HSBC.

You can put £20k in each year, and pay zero tax on the gains you make. I'm investing with a 10 year time horizon and have already exceeded the tax free allowance in terms of unrealised gains.

I am however transferring it over to another provider as the US trading fees are rather high @ $29.99 per trade, the interface is ancient and they take an age to add newly listed companies.

My advice on choosing a provider is get one with a reputation for good, prompt support that you can actually speak to. Many of the new wave of app based trading platforms only offer e-mail or in-app chat, often with excessive delays.

I created a Google sheet to track my portfolio, if you're familiar with excel you won't find it hard. You can do stuff like pull in currency conversions(useful if you're trading US stocks) and 15min delayed shareprices to keep an eye on things.

Alternatively Yahoo Finance has a good portfolio tracker, you just enter your share ticker, the price you paid and the number of shares and it calculates everything for you on a nice little dashboard.

Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 30th September 13:40