Long shot/High risk investing

[ChocolateFrog]

I save a reasonable amount in pension and ISA but was thinking it might be interesting to have some risky investments, small bets that you don't mind losing in the chance you might drop on the next Bitcoin, Tesla or Google.

Two questions. Where would you do it and where would you get tips from? If it's even worth doing.

Used to use etoro and did pretty well out of Bitcoin until I cashed out at $5k, so you can see I'm not very good at this. I was thinking £50 investments that would essentially be left indefinitely until they wither disappear or go big.

[Tye Green]

well, if you fancy more punts on crypto there are apparently 2.4 million crypto currencies so if you put £50 on each one that would cost you about £120 million - do you feel lucky?

[mikeiow]

I once put a couple of grand into a pals startup….to me, that was high risk, and indeed turned out that way too (although SEIS relief helped soften the blow at the time), but part of that was showing some faith to someone I wanted to encourage.

Aside from that, no….not into the ethos of crypto.
Have a little in P2P (property loans) that has done well (& in my head, could have all gone pear shaped), but really not much.

[Mr Overheads]

Looks at the What's your gamble thread in this forum. Then use Freetrade for example. Freetrade allows small share purchases with no cost (they make money by subscription fees for ISA's SIPP's etc)

[ChocolateFrog]

Tye Green said:

well, if you fancy more punts on crypto there are apparently 2.4 million crypto currencies so if you put £50 on each one that would cost you about £120 million - do you feel lucky?

That's what I feared, didn't realise it was that many but you'd be better off playing the Euromillions.

[ChocolateFrog]

mikeiow said:

I once put a couple of grand into a pals startup….to me, that was high risk, and indeed turned out that way too (although SEIS relief helped soften the blow at the time), but part of that was showing some faith to someone I wanted to encourage.

Aside from that, no….not into the ethos of crypto.
Have a little in P2P (property loans) that has done well (& in my head, could have all gone pear shaped), but really not much.

I was thinking properly long odds stuff rather than semi-sensible but still risky investments.

[ChocolateFrog]

Mr Overheads said:

Looks at the What's your gamble thread in this forum. Then use Freetrade for example. Freetrade allows small share purchases with no cost (they make money by subscription fees for ISA's SIPP's etc)

Interesting, thanks.

[Steve H]

ChocolateFrog said:

I was thinking properly long odds stuff rather than semi-sensible but still risky investments.

It’s essentially gambling, which is fine if you find it enjoyable and it doesn’t pressure you financially.

But you really need to see it as a thing that’s fun or interests you rather than any kind of investment or money making process.

The issue is that if you stick £50-500 on something even if it ended up multiplying by 100 it would still be only worth £5k-50k. Nice to have but not really life changing.

If you want potentially life changing results you have to start "investing" more serious numbers, amounts that matter to you. But then it stops being interesting and becomes important instead which probably isn’t a good idea for something that’s vastly unlikely to pay off.

[greengreenwood7]

IMO it'd be better to pick 2-3 ultra high growth potential assets and just go heavy in those rather than pumping £50 a pop into things that might pay off, especially at this stage of a crypto run.

yeps, could have bought Solana (which was always likely to do well) for $8 in '22 and its now $260 and likely goes north of $600 in coming mths, but the key to meaningful £worth returns is concentration in solid assets that have a lot of runway still ahead of them. Personally i'd take sticking a heavy % in a tesla type company over a hopeful dartboard approach any day; especially as the upside over the next 5 years is likely between 5-10x.