Trading the stockmarket (NO Referrals)

Cromulent said:
This is going to be one of those newbie questions I'm afraid.

I'd like to get into the stock market but I have very little money to invest. I could probably invest a maximum of £200 a month. On the other hand I am a programmer so I'm really interested in algorithmic trading and looking at financial data in an automated way. The problem is I don't really know where to start. Does anyone have any good recommendations for getting started in the stock market in general and also maybe some books on algorithmic trading?
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I don't know your age but I'd look at building up a fund in index trackers. Not exciting to be honest but if you can spend time in the market and build up a reasonable lump then compound interest should work it's magic and you will have a half decent pension.

Obvs save into your pension at work ( I am self-employed so I'm doing the index fund thing )

Have a look at The Escape Artist Website. He has a lot of good advice for folk investing small regular amounts.
 
Cromulent said:
This is going to be one of those newbie questions I'm afraid.

I'd like to get into the stock market but I have very little money to invest. I could probably invest a maximum of £200 a month. On the other hand I am a programmer so I'm really interested in algorithmic trading and looking at financial data in an automated way. The problem is I don't really know where to start. Does anyone have any good recommendations for getting started in the stock market in general and also maybe some books on algorithmic trading?
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On algorithmic trading:
- Not much information is out there as those who make money at it want to keep their secrets. Anything you do find will be out of date and likely very misleading.
- Most of it relies on very fast trades, often in and out in milliseconds. You won't have the market access to keep up, the latency will be awful.
- Your money pot is too small. The spread/margin on the trades will kill you.

If you want to look more then work on paper / simulated trading using one of the free sites out there. tradingview.com is pretty good for that. If you can prove you have an edge there, then its worth thinking real money.

I suspect @dowie will give you more reasons to avoid it too.
 
Cromulent said:
This is going to be one of those newbie questions I'm afraid.

I'd like to get into the stock market but I have very little money to invest. I could probably invest a maximum of £200 a month. On the other hand I am a programmer so I'm really interested in algorithmic trading and looking at financial data in an automated way. The problem is I don't really know where to start. Does anyone have any good recommendations for getting started in the stock market in general and also maybe some books on algorithmic trading?
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Hi mate I'd just buy a cheap tracker and be done with it. Let that build up for a while then think of fancy stuff. I would highly suggest a LISA, because it will keep you getting the cash til you are 60, if you contribute well it should help bridge the gap between when you want to quit work and when you get your pension. Also doesnt eat into the lifetime allowance.

Once you get 5 figures of investments then think about the fancier stuff, ie. sectors etc. I recently bought lots of emerging markets and south east asia.
 
£200 a month. On the other hand I am a programmer so I'm really interested in algorithmic trading and looking at financial data in an automated way
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I should post more finance videos as I find them on Youtube but computers are totally used in trading but not in the way you might think immediately, the biggest use would be in arbitrage on the shortest possible trades you can think. The computer is handling trading maybe below a second, they see buyers in various ways (they buy info on orders apparently thats legal) and buy ahead of them. So its not done by anyone personal, the computers are located like 50 metres from the exchange computer because its about latency and the space to locate there costs giants amount of money because of it.

Anyway as far as investing, you could own part of a finance firm that is pulling off this kind of thing but I dont see people can take part so easily. IGG is pretty profitable and in theory gains from volatility, GCAP is another http://www.stockchallenge.co.uk/ has all the firms in uk100 listed and then maybe further details on reuters or yahoo I think is ok

but who knows the news on each company well enough exactly (vs price), its a full time job trying to keep up and the unit trust option is way easier. Buying through the Brexit period before and after seems pretty obvious for a pullback and UK is cheaper then USA shares anyway, lots of those shares arent located in UK maybe at all. It might be the ft250 turns out better not sure

https://youtu.be/wCJjBt7V_Tc
 
I'm going to be trying to do some stock market trading for the first time in the new year. If anyone has any advice on a good stock market platform where I can buy shares in companies from around the world, I would appreciate it.

I'm thinking of opening a Stocks and Shares ISA for all of my trading since I won't be investing all that much (£150 a month I think).

If any of you have any advice for a newbie then let me know :).
 
Cromulent said:
I'm going to be trying to do some stock market trading for the first time in the new year. If anyone has any advice on a good stock market platform where I can buy shares in companies from around the world, I would appreciate it.

I'm thinking of opening a Stocks and Shares ISA for all of my trading since I won't be investing all that much (£150 a month I think).

If any of you have any advice for a newbie then let me know :).
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Are you planning on buying and selling a lot? Are you aware that there are fees to both buy and sell. These are usually a set figure (think I pay around £11 for each) so if you have a small amount of capital and plan to trade then the fees are going to eat all your profit unless you’re very lucky.
Your best to just buy shares or a fund and leave it alone.
If you buy £200 worth of shares, they increase by 15% and you sell them then you’ve only made £8 (4%) after fees...

Funds are free to trade on Hargreaves Lansdowne though there are management fees.
 
Cromulent said:
I'm going to be trying to do some stock market trading for the first time in the new year. If anyone has any advice on a good stock market platform where I can buy shares in companies from around the world, I would appreciate it.

I'm thinking of opening a Stocks and Shares ISA for all of my trading since I won't be investing all that much (£150 a month I think).
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As far as financial instruments are concerned I think you're going to be stuck with buy and hold investing or just investing in funds etc.. rather than "trading" per say. You could take a look at say Halifax share builder if you're going to invest in individual stocks with small amounts otherwise just stick to funds at the moment.

Ref your previous post re: algo trading/systematic trading

If you want to actively trade then, once you have saved up a bit more money, you could take a look at interactive brokers, they have an API and so you could look at attempting some systematic trading there.

Not wanting to sound rude but this field is incredibly competitive. If you've only got £150 a month to invest then either your current employer is drastically underpaying you or you're probably not at the same level as the sort of programmers employed in this field and presumably you don't have the background/knowledge the researchers tend to have either (Quantitative PhD/MSc, decent stats knowledge etc..)? That isn't to say you can't succeed but the odds are stacked against you. If you want to trade financial instruments on public exchanges you'll need more funds before you can even begin, perhaps you can find some edge that is somewhat limited and not worth exploiting by these firms but could be worthwhile exploiting by an individual investor.

In the meantime you could take a look at betfair - they've got an exchange and an API. Likewise Crypto might be worth a look too.
 
Ahleckz said:
Are you planning on buying and selling a lot? Are you aware that there are fees to both buy and sell. These are usually a set figure (think I pay around £11 for each) so if you have a small amount of capital and plan to trade then the fees are going to eat all your profit unless you’re very lucky.
Your best to just buy shares or a fund and leave it alone.
If you buy £200 worth of shares, they increase by 15% and you sell them then you’ve only made £8 (4%) after fees...

Funds are free to trade on Hargreaves Lansdowne though there are management fees.
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Thank you for the reply. Yes I am aware of the fees. It is a problem but I'm more keen on learning than anything at this point in time.

dowie said:
Not wanting to sound rude but this field is incredibly competitive. If you've only got £150 a month to invest then either your current employer is drastically underpaying you or you're probably not at the same level as the sort of programmers employed in this field and presumably you don't have the background/knowledge the researchers tend to have either
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I don't take that as being rude just honest. Thank you.

To answer your point I am disabled which is why I don't have much money but I have spent a good while teaching myself computer science and maths. I'm certainly not at PhD level although I can hold my own against undergraduate students in computer science.
 
Cromulent said:
To answer your point I am disabled which is why I don't have much money but I have spent a good while teaching myself computer science and maths. I'm certainly not at PhD level although I can hold my own against undergraduate students in computer science.
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Get a Fund and Share account with HL.
Plenty of good options there, and its low risk with minimal investment. Put a bit in each month and leave it for a good number of years and you should see decent growth. The money you have to spend is not fit to play the stock market to be honest, unless you go for some emerging markets but the risk of losing it all is gonna be high.

Lindsell Train Global Equity - is honestly an incredible option as a first timer.
Baillie Gifford American - is also generally good, but I wouldn't put anything in it until the NASDAQ has sorted itself out given its holdings to Amazon, Alphabet and Netflix.

It goes without saying, but you should not be touching anything with Apple in it at this current time.
 
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bought 1k of patagonia gold at 1p
53p now
really blew it could have nade a decent amount ,consolidation so im 50 percent down ,in a way im not too bothered as my instincts were correct but i just got greedy ,just going to hang on ,if i lose it i lose it
 
moon man said:
bought 1k of patagonia gold at 1p
53p now
really blew it could have nade a decent amount ,consolidation so im 50 percent down ,in a way im not too bothered as my instincts were correct but i just got greedy ,just going to hang on ,if i lose it i lose it
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Can you translate into English please?
 
i would be boasting if id made a fortune just thought id post the reallity of knee jerk ,dumb money investing ,enjoyed the ride though
edit enjoying the ride
 
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