Any UK members trade in shares?

Hi guys,

I'm keen on buying some shares - not a whole lot of money, probably just £20-30 a month. I basically want to dip my toes in. However, I cannot seem to find anywhere (other than Halifax's ShareBuilder service) that has a commission lower than £10. My bank (Natwest) charges £15, which on a monthly budget like mine isn't going to give me much room! :)

Are there any online share brokers, that are dependable and affordable that UK people can trade online with? (Or if any US members know of US-based companies that allow UK residents, and have low commission charges?)

My advice: Do short term, not long term. Buy at start of a day, sell at end, watch bloomberg for tips, I used to play a real-time real-price real-stock game and made about $10,000 profit in the first day (starting with $100,000).

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Originally Posted by Generalissimo

My advice: Do short term, not long term. Buy at start of a day, sell at end, watch bloomberg for tips, I used to play a real-time real-price real-stock game and made about $10,000 profit in the first day (starting with $100,000).

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Day-trading is going to be pretty pointless with a budget of 20-30 pounds per month!

Mark, maybe you should consider saving up your budget for 6 months or so at a time and then making a larger purchase all at once to minimize the bite that the trading fee will take out.

Sean, where can I find this stock game? I'd love to check it out.

Take a look at www.fool.co.uk - lots of online brokers. Nothing really available for less than £10 per trade though - online broker list. I like the look of selftrade.co.uk.

Do you want to trade shares (short term) or invest (long term)?

I agree with Westech, day trading is going to be a short journey to broke with £30 pounds or so. £10 to buy, then £10 to sell kind of means your buys would have to more than double in value just to break even! £30 minus £10 fee gives £20 worth of shares, double to £40, sell, pay £10 fee gives you your £30 back, then oops you also have to pay £5 stamp duty when you bought :) If you find a share guaranteed to more than double in a day, please PM me :)

I am investing in a FTSE 100 tracker at the moment, about £200/month. Even at this amount, I thought the costs of trading were too high a percentage, so went with a tracker - no buy or sell costs, just a 0.5% fee per year.

Edit: You can play with buying and selling shares for practice at the fool.co.uk too.

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Originally Posted by Westech

Day-trading is going to be pretty pointless with a budget of 20-30 pounds per month!

Mark, maybe you should consider saving up your budget for 6 months or so at a time and then making a larger purchase all at once to minimize the bite that the trading fee will take out.

Sean, where can I find this stock game? I'd love to check it out.

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I'll try to remember, I think it was bought by WSJ or Forbes or another famous wall street company...

It was Market Watch actually...


http://game.marketwatch.com/Home/default.asp

Yahoo! UK's finance portal has a trading game, too :)

Thanks for the replies, guys. I think I'll either look at other options (such as an ISA) or save up until I have a few hundred quid to play with.

r2 what's the tracker do?

Is a tracker the same thing as an index fund? Does quid == pounds? You British people are wierd! ;)

Thanks for the links to the games. I'll check them out when I have some time.

Shaddap yankee! :p

Yes, quids = ££. :) Just like $$ = dollaroos! :D

Mark, my tracker just follows the FTSE 100 (or whichever index you choose, FTSE all share, Nasdaq etc). I.e. I put about £900 about three weeks ago when the FTSE 100 was about 4850, now its up to about 5000, so its up to about £930 :)

Heres an article on the fool that probably explains it better.

Rather than buying individual shares, you give the company money, and they invest it with everyone elses in proportional shares in a certain index. Lower risk, lower potential gains, but best if you are investing a small amount because of the saving in initial fees.

I invested in a unit trust fund a while back at about £35 a month; it was a higher risk fund - companies that were underperforming but hopefully on the way up. That was with M&G, I think. They would calculate the value of the fund daily, possibly minute by minute, givning a bid price for each 'unit' (what you pay) and a sell price (what you get when you cash in). The £35 would by the number of units according to the price that day

Anyway the advantage is that regular investments can help smooth over the bumps in the daily share price (rather then putting £3k in and finding out the fund rockets the next week.

as long as there is a general upward trend, you do ok!

advantage is

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Originally Posted by Blue Cat Buxton

Anyway the advantage is that regular investments can help smooth over the bumps in the daily share price (rather then putting £3k in and finding out the fund rockets the next week).

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Yep, pretty good way of derisking your investments. Also known as 'pound cost averaging'.

And if you meant 'goes up a lot' by 'rocket', I would like to put £3K in and have it rocket the next week :)

This is all very intriguing! :)

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And if you meant 'goes up a lot' by 'rocket', I would like to put £3K in and have it rocket the next week

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I should read what I write rather than write what I think! That is of course the ideal situation!

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Originally Posted by Generalissimo

My advice: Do short term, not long term. Buy at start of a day, sell at end, watch bloomberg for tips, I used to play a real-time real-price real-stock game and made about $10,000 profit in the first day (starting with $100,000).

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Bad advice... :rolleyes:

Ya... don't base your advice on a game, try doing it with real money and see how long you last.

Day trading is a good way to end up broke. Some people do it, some people make money, most people end up broke.

Also, atleast here in the US, if you actually do make money you pay significantly lower taxes on it if you held the stock for over 1 year.

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Originally Posted by Chris

Also, atleast here in the US, if you actually do make money you pay significantly lower taxes on it if you held the stock for over 1 year.

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Similar here in the UK, its a bit complicated though. Best putting any investments in an ISA though to shield you from tax.

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Originally Posted by Chris

Also, atleast here in the US, if you actually do make money you pay significantly lower taxes on it if you held the stock for over 1 year.

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Yes, capital gains tax is cut by half, if you have hold your investment for more than 12 months in Australia.

I use http://www.iwebsharedealing.co.uk/. Free to join and no subscription costs. Flat fee of £10 per deal.

I don't use it so much anymore. Though I used to deal a lot with penny shares on AIM (Alternative Investment Market). They're risky but the returns can be really nice for not a lot of outlay. Say if you buy 2000 shares at 20p each and then the company releases some good news meaning the share price goes up to say 50p or more (and it does happen) then you'll make a nice profit in a very short space of time. Obviously, it's easy to lose very quickly too. But hopefully, you wont lose too much as they're only penny shares. I used to do it for the fun of it really.

I traded with a company called UBC Media. At the start of 2000 their share price was only around 25p. By mid year the price was peaking at around 65p. I traded in this period and made some decent money.

I also traded with a company called Einstein Group PLC. They went right down the drain and I lost almost everything. But because it was only a tiny sum to start with, it was no big deal.

There's a good magazine that deals with penny share dealing too. Can't remember what it's called though. It's in WHSmiths though.