[Finance] Investing in stocks... for fun (and maybe some profit?)... tips?

[happypig]

I worked with a bloke who, aged 50, took voluntary redundancy with the intention of earning a living "playing the stock market", which he claimed to know all about.
Two years later he was virtually potless and had had to borrow money to pay off debts he had accrued (I'm not sure how he spent more than he had, shorting maybe ?).
Silly c**t ended up working into his 70s fitting kitchens.

 

[Vin]

All depends on your time horizon and your appetite for risk. If you're serious, and want to grow your savings for retirement, that's one thing. How many years out from retirement are you? If you're just gambling, remember that high reward comes with high risk. Warren Buffett said something like "People who want to get rich quick never get rich at all. It's better to get rich slowly." I've mangled the quote but you get the gist.

Hard to offer actual recommendations without knowing the answers to these questions about time and risk. But one important suggestion is that you look at funds and ETFs rather than individual companies. I've been investing for nearly 30 years and have all sorts of stuff. But to a new investor prepared to be patient I'd suggest looking at Vanguard funds which are low cost, especially their LifeStrategy funds which spread risk across sectors and geographies. A good all-purpose fund I've held profitably for years is Terry Smith's Fundsmith. He believes in investing in household staples and commodities that will always be in demand.

A really good book is Tim Hale's Smarter Investing which is aimed at people who are happy to be patient and invest in funds and trackers. He has tons of great advice on things like 'dollar cost averaging' and 'passive investing' (Google them).

There's a million other things I could say but an internet football forum isn't really the place to educate yourself on a topic like this. At a minimum, do a bit of reading and start ploughing through various Reddit groups perhaps. You'll get plenty of bad advice from nutters there eg gold and crypto fanatics but you should be able to spot the occasional nuggets too.

Have you ever used EToro? I put a bit in on a copy trader. I have no idea of S&S but seems ok so far. Would you recommend using ET?

 

[Pevenseagull]

I worked with a bloke who, aged 50, took voluntary redundancy with the intention of earning a living "playing the stock market", which he claimed to know all about.
Two years later he was virtually potless and had had to borrow money to pay off debts he had accrued (I'm not sure how he spent more than he had, shorting maybe ?).
Silly c**t ended up working into his 70s fitting kitchens.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[dazzer6666]

Have you ever used EToro? I put a bit in on a copy trader. I have no idea of S&S but seems ok so far. Would you recommend using ET?

It’s alright as a trading platform (for the tiny bit of crypto I play around with anyway). Bought a small amount of a selection of tokens - most have completely bombed, one is doing OK and has more than covered the losses on the others (atm anyway). I don’t intend to do any more but it was an interesting experience. There’s more BS on the comments threads there than on here

 

[beorhthelm]

look out for an industry or sector thats coming into a trend, example Nvidia is going to keep printing money all the time people want to buy more chips for AI. i caught the wave on Roll Royce and still keen on uranium in general. another was the defense industry, a bit obvious about a year ago and gone very well (missed that myself). quantum computing might be good for next few years. crypto related stocks for the next 6-9 mths should be near to certain (but dont hold too long). pay attention to US interest rates - lower means more money going into stocks.

after that it's the old buy low and sell high, see what's out of favour that might be running up soon, and when it's and fading. use a ISA for tax efficiency (not least not having to report any gains, let alone paying tax), though limits some shares. if trading small or regular bear in mind the trade cost, use something like T212 thats fee free (yep you lose in the price a little but far less)

 

[Moin]

Have you ever used EToro? I put a bit in on a copy trader. I have no idea of S&S but seems ok so far. Would you recommend using ET?

Sorry, no. Not something I know about. Main platform I use is steady old Hargreaves Lansdown. They're not the cheapest but I like the interface and they're stable and quite long-established. I also have an account directly with Vanguard UK for some ISA funds.

 

[Seagull58]

It’s alright as a trading platform (for the tiny bit of crypto I play around with anyway). Bought a small amount of a selection of tokens - most have completely bombed, one is doing OK and has more than covered the losses on the others (atm anyway). I don’t intend to do any more but it was an interesting experience. There’s more BS on the comments threads there than on here

I opened an etoro account in February to "play around" with crypto. I do only $10 and $20 trades, both longs and shorts.
If Mustafa wants to trade small amounts and treat it as gambling then he'll have much more fun with crypto coins which fluctuate 3 to 5% on almost a daily basis and occasionally fluctuate 10% or more in a day.
I nearly always close my trades at 2 to 3% profit, with the occasional 10 to 20% profit when I'm on the right side of one of Trump's brain farts.
Whilst I currently have a number of open trades that are well under water, in terms of closed trades I've managed 78 profitable and 2 loss-making (both of which would have been profitable if I'd hung on in for another 24 hours). While those numbers sound pretty good, total profit is only 20%
I find etoro very easy to use.

 

[Bry Nylon]

 

[HeaviestTed]

The only day trading advice that has been useful (and free) has been realdaytrading on Reddit;

https://www.reddit.com/r/RealDayTrading/s/qVBfit5Gud

The programme is basically, trade for three months on paper (spend no money) while you learn the system - if on paper you can consistently make a profit then move onto 1 share per trade for three months.

Most people give up before then but if you stick to paper trading you can’t lose real money (and you will lose if you use real money)

 

[Doonhamer7]

I run a t212 account and a Freetrade account both for fun. My main investments ISAs are all in ETFs - as Warren Buffet says thats where you should be unless you understand what your doing, do remember to look at their fee level (i use vanguard and blackrock(ishares) mainly). On one of my accounts I run it as a growth fund (so has lots of magnificent seven and the European GRANOLASS shares). The other account is a dividend account - mainly FTSE250 big dividends (mainly finance/insurance and tobacco)

 

[southstandandy]

Gold is the only investment I've ever made money in. Sadly whenever the economy tanks or a major war happens Gold (mostly) seems to go up. Since Covid we've made about £60k in profit which is decent but we did buy quite a bit.

 

[Paulie Gualtieri]

Gold is the only investment I've ever made money in. Sadly whenever the economy tanks or a major war happens Gold (mostly) seems to go up. Since Covid we've made about £60k in profit which is decent but we did buy quite a bit.

 

[dstanman]

Invested in some of the utilities. Dividends help pay for the yearly cost of broadband, energy prices etc

 

[hart's shirt]

Gold is the only investment I've ever made money in.

You could consider silver too.

It doesn't have to be an either ore situation.

 

[Knocky's Nose]

AI, Robotics and Self-Driving Taxis and Delivery Vehicles will be the future.

Tesla is at the front of all of these, so that'd be my long term play and one of the stocks I'll be rotating into when I've cashed out of the crypto bull market.

Day trading is for fools now unless you've got a more powerful AI than the people at Blackrock, Vanguard and so on. They'll clean you out faster than you can fart the morning after a curry.

 

[Justice]

Day trading is for fools now unless you've got a more powerful AI than the people at Blackrock, Vanguard and so on. They'll clean you out faster than you can fart the morning after a curry.

Not necessarily moving averages are your friend here trade with the institutions not against them. The first move when the USA markets open is generally the opposite to how the trading session will end.
They like to go on a stop hunt early doors.

 

[dazzer6666]

Gold is the only investment I've ever made money in. Sadly whenever the economy tanks or a major war happens Gold (mostly) seems to go up. Since Covid we've made about £60k in profit which is decent but we did buy quite a bit.

A wide range of med/high risk global equity funds for me - consistently delivered way more than any cash product or inflation over the last 20 years. The dips that happen now and again (including the big ones like 2008, Covid etc) have always been relatively short-lived. I retired early 5 years ago, but our cumulative pots of funds are higher now than the day I stopped work despite completely funding us for that time.

 

[Lord Charles]

View attachment 202897

Greed is good, as someone once said....

 

[Peteinblack]

Not being an expert, I just put as much as I can afford each month into a Stocks and Shares ISA, but with three different 'bundles' to spread the risk.

I always viewed them as a long-term project for retirement, so am not too bothered when they dip in value; they invariably recover. My portfolio crashed by £10,000 immediately after Liz Truss's/Kwasi Kwarteng's disastrous budget, but had recovered a few months later.

Much more recently, I 'lost' £8,000 when The Orange Man-child (aka The MAGA Moron) announced his first tranche of tariffs, and the financial markets slumped, but this month, my portfolio has actually increased by £10,000 - so I'm up £2,000 in just 4 weeks after my initial Trump-inspired losses.

 

[WATFORD zero]

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