my biggest investment yet is £800 in Ovaco Gold, still trading at a discount to cash and investments, they've enough funding for three years and could have a mine going in 2013 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/...
Trading the stockmarket (NO Referrals)
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At the moment Rockhopper is an oil exploration company so naturally they have poor cash flow, however they do have about £200 million in the bank to fund their Sea Lion appraisal and further exploration wells for the rest of the year. I expect the share price to be much higher by that time once they've booked reserves, so if small holders want a rights issue they may as well buy now at the current levels. I'm not expecting much dilution either as production costs can be funded by bonds and further exploration funded by production revenue. Plenty to gain with RKH I'd say so I'll continue to hold my 37-280p tranches
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Don't take this the wrong, just some helpful advice really, but when you take fees and what you could make into account, there is little good in putting small amounts, eg £250, into different companies. With the £1000 odd you have invested, you have already probably lost an amount in fees which could be as much as 5%.
I did the same when I was just starting out, but I very rarely trade less than £2k in one transaction now.
Best thing someone said to me was don't trade with more than you can afford to lose.
Mal
Thanks for the adviceDon't take this the wrong, just some helpful advice really, but when you take fees and what you could make into account, there is little good in putting small amounts, eg £250, into different companies. With the £1000 odd you have invested, you have already probably lost an amount in fees which could be as much as 5%.
I did the same when I was just starting out, but I very rarely trade less than £2k in one transaction now.
Best thing someone said to me was don't trade with more than you can afford to lose.
Mal
, wish I'd known that when I started! Or thought about it more, I have definately already made that mistake :S. Ironically if I sold all my shares tomorrow I'd just break even.I could lose all the money I've put in and it wouldn't really impact on anything at the moment as I've still got some other savings in an ISA, so I've not made that mistake.
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^^ I'd really recommend the Naked Trader book. Was recommended to me from here and I'm 3/4 of the way through and it's been great.
From a £250 trade, a £12.50 commission fee (plus that again when you sell remember) is a huge percentage of your overall trade. Combined with the stamp duty and spread and you've instantly put yourself in a position whereby you need a fairly large % increase even just to break even.
From a £250 trade, a £12.50 commission fee (plus that again when you sell remember) is a huge percentage of your overall trade. Combined with the stamp duty and spread and you've instantly put yourself in a position whereby you need a fairly large % increase even just to break even.
Yeah I think I'll get the naked trader book at somepoint.
I know what you mean about the trades, I guess I've probably been overly optimistic at times hoping things will go high
, also as I plan to hold some for 40 years than in that time hopefully might have gone up a lot particularly with dividend reinvestment (At present I'd still say I'm investing not trading as I don't have any plans to sell any of my shares for at least a couple a years, well except ecr minerals if it rockets).To begin with I wouldn't have been comfortable putting in a lot of money as I didn't feel I really knew what I was doing and I'm still learning.
Reality is virtually no-one actually knows what they're doing (except for a few billionaires) everyone else is just kidding themselves.
Though as the previous poster pointed out transaction costs can hurt you a lot when it comes to small investments - you mentioned in your post something about investing £250 in a stock with a view to putting in another £250 next week? If its a long term investment then what are you waiting for to happen over the next week - on what basis would you invest/not invest the other £250... if you think the stock will perform well then why not just invest the full £500 now.
As for learning etc.. if you're investing over a period of a few years then there isn't much you can do in terms of practicing picking stocks. You can't paper trade for example, you'd run your mock portfolio a few times and by the time you feel you're ready to invest you'd be 80 odd and about to die soon. You could maybe use historical data but then again you're presumably using more than just price data for your decisions.
Personally I'd just take the plunge and run with it, read the books, don't just invest in these speculative small cap stocks and give yourself clear entry/exit strategies etc... not I'll stick a bit in xyz then maybe next week if I feel confident I'll stick a bit more in... You want to have a decent reason for investing and also plan your exit, if XYZ drops a certain % what will you do, at what point do you cut your losses(consider a stop loss), similarly how long are you going to let it run before you take profit - trailing stop perhaps. Similarly if it does naff all how long before you exit and invest in something else. You really want to plan this stuff in advance else you'll be left looking a XYZ going down, then browsing some internet forums where people are saying its still a good buy, then watching it drop a bit more etc..etc.. It all needs to be unemotional, don't listen to BS opinions about individual stocks on the internet, do your own research, set your targets, set your stop loss etc...
If you think a company looks good long term I don't see what's wrong with holding for a long time... Obviously if the situation changes I'd have to make a decision about whether I still want to hold. Setting some stop losses is a good idea.
The reason for investing next week with northumbrian water again (at a low cost) £1.50 pls stamp duty rather than all at once is because I don't where the price will go, I'll get a mid point of the two hopefully avoiding my money going in at the top...
Soldato
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There's better ways of avoiding peaks than splitting your buy into two separate trades a week apart. What if both those days have a peak by coincidence?
How, wait a month?
Soldato
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BOY, BLND and LAND are all on small losses at the moment as expected. Holding them for the longer term. DCC slowly moving up, again shorter term.
MML though has made good gains without two much ramping or hype: up to 502 today from 460 on Tuesday.
Although not holding them (as they're not available on Bullbearings), BOD is also up 30% since Monday.
Also opened a few spreads on BB.
Soldato
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Eh? How does that even make sense?
Look at its graph and work out its resistance and support levels would be the quickest way.
I think interactive investor is owned by HBOS.
Well it might have given more time for movement...
Your suggestion sounds a lot better though.
Soldato
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What brokers do people use here for spread betting?
Bought some CEY today. An Egyptian gold miner that suffered a sell off during the Egyptian uprising. They look very cheap with 150 mil in the bank and no debts, new mines being developed and increasing production with their current mine.
CEO/Chairman seem very optimistic as well, some big director buys last month to back this up. My first miner purchase so will see how it goes
CEO/Chairman seem very optimistic as well, some big director buys last month to back this up. My first miner purchase so will see how it goes
Soldato
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So long as you realise a spreadaccount is like a broker who gives terrible spread quotes on the bid/offer then send me a message and I'll recommend a few depending on what you what to deal
Good thing about them obviously is they always happy to lend money but obviously you may then get a margin call with zero notice again this varies on the company how much leeway you get.
Most people who use SB have paranoid delusions the company is out to get them, reality is its easy to mess up the cashflow and market volatility, etc aka japan mini crash, etc
RE: Cashflow I sold off a bit of GPX as its recovered. Didnt want to but its risen on weaker volume, its at resistance.
Need to balance things with profit taken especially as my computer is locking up/need replacing and Im afk
Interesting stuff with BP vs Russia. I could see that swinging up but for now its down
CEY is great in theory, Egpyt is ironically more risky without the dictator but in the end also more profitable.
I own them for a while and I watch them all the time. Questor reviewed them, 9pe for 2012 apparently. Super cheap miner good cashflow i think. 200 or more is fair
Alongside them relatively see POG
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