BarraBod

Due to the terrible interest rates banks are now giving us, I decided to start putting my money in to stocks and shares. I'm sure there are some people on here who have done the same.

I've been doing a lot of reading and watching some tutorial videos. I see my self as an investor more than a trader (I'm holding my shares for the long (1 year+)), but I will call it trading for the time being, as I would definitely sell if my shares rocketed in a week

....unlikely tho

I'll talk about the shares I buy and keep an update on how they are going here.
So far I have 2 companies:

Albe Minerals (ALBA)(-30%)
Europa Oil & GAS (EOG)(0%)

I think both companies have a lot of potential, and because the oil prices are low, these guys are cheap. They are both on AIM which means a lot of volatility. They can have big swings as much as 50% in 1 day, in any direction. As you can see I'm already down 30% on ALBA

But I feel with the assets they have, they can easily rise in the next couple of years to a nice bit of profit.

I'll keep you updated on any big swings or any new companies I've bought shares in. Below is a list on my "watch list". Its simply companies I've either bought, or want to keep an eye on. Any questions, or even companies you think have potential (Not for us to buy, for us to research), then fire on!

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A book I would recommend would be The Naked Trader as its funny and not boring, but teaches you the techniques he used to make over £2m in the stock market.
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There are plenty videos on YouTube which can help you read charts and price movement better...something I've not looked too much in to.

Disclamer: These are not tips and I encourage anyone who decides to dip their foot in to invested or trading, to read up on it first, and to do your own research on the companies you want to buy shares in. Never take tips!

Last Post 7 years ago by

Harvie

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Hey BarraBod, loving this thread.

I've got a little nest egg that I want to invest, but shyed away from stocks and shares as I wanted a quick ROI, from what little I know it's best to hold them for the long-term if you have little idea on what you're doing.

Have you looked at Peer-2-Peer lending? like www.prosper.com

The company is worth around $2billion and you can yield around 7-12% per year. I'm looking into P2P lending and will most likely invest £500 or so.

What platform do you use to trade and how often do you check your shares?

Hey, Harvie. That's my find time hearing about Peer-2-Peer lending and it looks really interesting! It's definitely a great way to make easy returns. The plus side to that is you're money can't go down, like shares can.

I use Hargreaves Lansdown for buying and selling shares. It costs £12 per transaction, so I try and keep them to a minimum. I have put my shares in an ISA so they are also tax free.

I check my shares a few times a day, as they can have big swings, so I need to find out the reason for this before I make a decision to hold or sell. I also check Vox Markets every morning, as they release news at 7am. I check to see if my companies have made any announcements (RNS)!

Because I'm only looking at Oil & Gas and mining companies, any news can swing these by a massive %. 2 months ago 88E announced that they may have found over a billion barrels of oil in Alaska. Their shares have now went up over 1000%. Shame I missed that one

I've had my money in ALBA for a couple of months. They have a 10% stake in a lot of oil, but their share price keeps dropping as no news has came out. People on AIM are impatient and move from share to share if nothing is happening. which causes a drop in the SP. I'm hoping for an RNS to be released tomorrow about how much moneys worth of oil they have a percent in!

Going to watch this thread with interest. I've always wanted to dip into stock trading but never put the time into it and also never really had funds for it. Building a modest little bankroll now so might consider devoting some time to researching it in the near future. Especially once we see you crush it and make millions!

Most brokers have a virtual part where you can play with fake money on the real stock market. We could even set up a PokerVIP league and compete against each other

Its good practice anyway. But its shit when you make money and think "I could have used real money instead of this fake nonsense".

I'm not sure whats wrong with the links I put up.

I think your links don't work because you forgot to put the http:// and started with www.

I keep getting told to buy oil shares as they are at record lows but I know nothing about anything. Is there an amount of shares you should buy based on price?

For example, if shares are at $5 you should invest at least $1000 to see any return. Or if shares are at $500 you should invest minimum $2000.

I hope that makes sense.

Thats the exact reason I've been buying shares in oil companies. They are very low and are set to come up (not guaranteed tho).

The number of shares you buy is quite irrelevant for first time buyers. I don't even know how many I own. All I know is how much they cost me and how much they are worth now.

To answer your question, I'll use my two holdings as an example. I bought my ALBA shares for 0.45p, and I bought my EOG shares for 6p. So I payed over 12x more the EOG shares but I have the same amount of money invested in both. I obviously have more shares in ALBA but they both rise and fall the same.

When the share price starts getting higher, the movements are usually smaller. Say you invested in Apple or Google. You don't really see big swings in either direction in short periods of time. It usually take a long time for those shares to move 20%. But in AIM, I seen a share go up 200% in 1 day....again, I wasn't in it

I'm looking forward to the markets opening today after the weekend. Hopefully I'll have some good screenshots of ALBA and EOG. Reading the forums people keeps saying news is coming (but you can't really trust these people). I'm working the nightshift so I'll stay up for 8am. If no news, then its bed time.

I see, great. Loving this, been wanting to invest in shares for as long as I can remember but never really had the ()() lol.

What do you expect your yearly yield return be like? I remember hearing that getting 3-7% gains is great, but from the sounds of it it looks like you're playing the higher risk/reward game, as you said shares price can double in a single day.

haha yeah it is quite nerve wrecking when you first buy shares, especially when they start dropping for no reason. I think poker players would be good at it as they can keep their cool in these situations. You get people who panic sell a lot. In AIM they actually drop the share price quickly to get people to sell at a lower price, so they can buy them up for themselves!

In the book I'm reading, it says you should aim for a 20% increase in each company. But you should get out if it falls below 10%. Yu can set stop losses to help with this. I wouldn't recommend doing this in AIM. I would leave that for bigger companies. The bigger the company, the safer it is, but the slower the gains. The book says to go for companies worth around £50m to £4bn. My companies are woth £4m and £12m!!

Here is the end of the day results:

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The reason ALBA is rising is because there are a lot of rumours going around of a great report to come out. No one knows for sure what the report will say! There is an old saying "Buy on rumour, sell on news".

I love the thoughts of it,the gambler in me i guess.
I dont think id ever be confident enough but ill watch this with interest.

You should do a begginners guide for those interested.I for example had a quick look on the site you provided.WOW confusing.
What account did you go with?Theres ISAs Fund and share - god knows what else.

Yeah it can be a bit overwhelming at first. The account I would recommend opening first is the "funds and shares" account. I would then open an ISA after doing that. If investing < £3k, then the "funds and shares" account will do, but no harm in opening the ISA encase you hit it big, as you have to pay tax on any profit > £11k in a year (you never know), unless its in an ISA.

I can definitely give small tips on how I trade everyday. I can even tell you why I've picked each company and tell you what I look out for. I have some screenshots from my book which are good to follow. I'll also answer any question, but remember, I'm a newbie at this also

I'll start with this basic tip:

When you buy a share, you are automatically down because of the "spread" (the difference between the buy price and sell price). In the pic below, the "ask" is the price you pay and the "bid" is the price you can sell at. the share price is somewhere in the middle of the bid and ask. The bit I've highlighted is the spread, which is 8.33%.

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This means our share price needs to go up 8.33% to breakeven. This is quite a bit, but common in smaller companies.

Tip 2: Market Capital (Mcap)

This is one of the first things you should look for in a company. This is what the market think a company if worth (investors are the market) and a lot of the time, the market are wrong. If we check a companies news, and lets say they have no debt, they have £1m in net cash and made £500k profit last year. Now lets say that company has a Mcap of £4m. I would see this company as undervalued, then I would think about buying their shares. If the companies Mcap is 8 to 10 times the size of its profit, then its a good buy...the closer the profits are to the Mcap, the better! There is obviously a few other things we would need to check, like can they sustain this kind of profit in the next year and do they have any debt...along with a load of other things!

The more shares a company sells, the more the Mcap goes up, and the hight the share price goes up. Of course the opposite happens when shares are sold!

In the pic below, we can see the Mcap of £4.83m.

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If I didn;t explain it well enough, here is investopedias version.

I use a few websites for researching companies. Here are a few.

London South Easy
Vox Markets
Share WIse
I'm only getting used to http://www.advfn.com, but it has loads of great features.

You will find recent news, charts, share price and Mcap in all these sites. Its really a matter of preference.

Today was a break even day!

This escalated quickly. Feel I'm a little out of my depth now and I need to do some background reading. Since I can't get the book you suggested where I am, do you follow any blogs or know sites that put you in the right direction?

Always something I have thought about dabbling in for sure and know

@Jamie does a fair bit of it!

I think my example is what makes it look more complicated than what it is. Here is a better example.

The reason I bought in to ALBA is because they have a 10% holding in what could be, billions of barrels of oil. The only things is it could be a couple of years before they can extract the oil.. They have a market capital of £4m. This is probably what they are worth right now, as they haven't made money in a couple of years and are replying on share holders to fund them. But once they start getting closer to production, the more people will buy their shares as they will be making a lot of money once in production, the more money they make, the more people will want to buy their shares

There are of course the risks here. There might not be as much oil as they first thought, and it might not be as easy for them to extract it. These are more reason why they only have a market capital of £4m. If they can prove that they can extract a lot, people will buy it and the market capital will rise (IMO).

So I bought them because I feel they will be worth a lot more than £4m one day!

Another break even day today. Its going to be quiet until some news is released.

Decided to go ahead and buy the Intelligent Investor and How To Eat The World. Been procrastinating far too long about finding suitable ways to invest my savings, this thread has really been a kick up the backside.

I would recommend looking at companies news to try and get used to it. By law every company listed on the stock market has to release news when something in the company happens that could effect the share price, this is called an RNS (regulatory news).

I like to use Vox Markets as its easy to use. You can see RNS at the top of the page. If you click that it will give you the most recent news that was released on Friday.

What you are looking for is companies who are "exceeding expectations", signed new contracts or pretty much anything that looks good. Some RNS are boring and don't tell you much, but every now and again, you get a good one that looks promising. There would be other things to check also, but we'll get to that.

Loving this thread. Any updates?

Sup Guys.

Barra, are you focusing on fundamental trading or technical analysis.
Obviously you're using basic T.A with Mcap and Spread but in terms of chart indicators etc.

How interested are you in Forex and Commodities? I feel like it is an easier market to start in once one can understand the pairings in Forex because the Volume of trade is so much higher and less 'gaps' tend to occur. Thoughts?

@Bassy I'm focusing on fundamentals, with the odd look at the charts. I took an online course on T.A but I got bored after lesson 4. I maybe should have stuck it out as I had learnt a lot in those 4 lessons. Charts don't interest me much, but they do have good tell tale signs but If I see one of the signs, its still not enough to make me sell, as I'm not confident enough in my chart reading. Plus, if the fundamentals look good, then I'm in it for the long haul!

Commodities are the only thing I've been buying in to at the moment. I live in the UK but get paid in Euros, so I have to either stash away the money until the euro gets better, or cash it in right away, that is probably the closest I'll get to Forex...I'm not sure that counts tho

Do you trade often? Do you do quick trades or have you got some long term holdings?

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