Hello, New to Trading

[nylelevi]

Hello all ,

In the recent months I have become really interested in investing, and particularly in trading shares. I have started making my way through books on the subject such as the Naked Trader and books on technical analysis.

I have a few questions if anyone would be kind enough to answer:


What are the average fees that are usually involved when making a trade? (I live in the UK)

Can anybody recommend a good broker?

Does a standard broker also allow you to short stocks, or do you need a specific spreadbetting account for that?

Does it cost extra to add stop losses when you long/short shares?


Thanks again, and Im looking forward to getting involved in this forum too!

 

[malaguti]

What are the average fees that are usually involved when making a trade? (I live in the UK)

it can vary from £5 to about £20, iweb are at the £5 and are the cheapest execution only sharedealing service. Typically though, the £10 is the average. This is just the commission charges.
On top of this is the introduction of the inactivity fee and this ranges from about £5 to £10 per quarter if you haven't made any transactions

Can anybody recommend a good broker?

I use selftrade, and iweb and they're both good. Barclays is also quite a good one, and good generally comes down to the instruments you can actually trade in along with ease of use and charges! I've also used interactive brokers but I didn't like them and the inactivity fees were very high as well as trading UK shares at £20.

Does a standard broker also allow you to short stocks, or do you need a specific spreadbetting account for that?

you need to use CFDs or spreadbetting

Does it cost extra to add stop losses when you long/short shares?

not necessarily, it depends on the broker. some don't allow you to set a stop loss, whereas some will charge you if you use a guaranteed stop loss, but most will allow a stop loss at no extra cost (from my experience)

Hope this helps Nylelevi, if you need anything else, just let me know.

 

[nylelevi]

Thanks malaguti! That's very informative. Ive just had a look at Selftrade and I will open a demo account with them.

With regards to the trade fees, are those prices the total cost of the buy and sell, or is it around £10 each time you buy, and then another £10 when you sell the shares back?

Also, I am unsure of how much money someone would need to start off. My aim is to slowly build my investment over time and I plan on using the demo account first, but would £2-3k be an acceptable amount to begin with?

Thanks!

 

[malaguti]

Thanks malaguti! That's very informative. Ive just had a look at Selftrade and I will open a demo account with them.

With regards to the trade fees, are those prices the total cost of the buy and sell, or is it around £10 each time you buy, and then another £10 when you sell the shares back?

Also, I am unsure of how much money someone would need to start off. My aim is to slowly build my investment over time and I plan on using the demo account first, but would £2-3k be an acceptable amount to begin with?

Thanks!

No problem, unfortunately they are for each transaction both the purchase, and each sale be it all of the shares, or just some of the shares

whether 2-3 is acceptable, this is debatable
lets say you start with 3k. You risk say 2%..so approx £60
with the purchase and subsequent sale, thats £25 (not inc stamp duty) you're initial £60 would now have to generate over 40% return to just break even.
now, lets say you have 10,000 and you risk the same %ge now £200 "only" now has to return 12% to break even
So if you bought shares in Barclays for example you would need barclays share price to have gone up 40% to have recovered your risk in the first instance. That's a very very tall ask!

Do you have a strategy, an edge or are you hoping to just put some into a healthy stock and see how it goes? You may get lucky, or you may have to wait for your capital to return itself before you sell for a small profit and start again etc..very very time consuming.

You could possibly turn to your demo account and try your strategies, see what works etc, then find a spread betting account which doesn't incur such high charges and then when you are able to start generating returns you could think then about funding this sharedealing account with a bit more than just 2-3k knowing you have a good strategy under your belt. Just a suggestion.

you can make it with 2-3k but not with excessive charges holding you back initially

 

[nylelevi]

Okay Im going to look into what charges each company has. That is definitely important to take into consideration when calculating profits/losses, especially as I don't have a lot of capital to begin with.

I don't have a solid strategy yet as Im hoping to test everything on a demo account and work out the chinks in the armour etc.

In the meantime I guess I need to find ways to increase my 2-3k!

Thanks again malaguti

 

[floridahummer]

good deal

Hello all ,

In the recent months I have become really interested in investing, and particularly in trading shares. I have started making my way through books on the subject such as the Naked Trader and books on technical analysis.

I have a few questions if anyone would be kind enough to answer:


What are the average fees that are usually involved when making a trade? (I live in the UK)

Can anybody recommend a good broker?

Does a standard broker also allow you to short stocks, or do you need a specific spreadbetting account for that?

Does it cost extra to add stop losses when you long/short shares?


Thanks again, and Im looking forward to getting involved in this forum too!

hi I use the share centre in Birmingham,its about £7.50 but they have two accounts
standard trading and frequent trading,it all depends how often yiu are going to buy and sell,i have had no problems buying or selling even in fast moving markets when people from other brokers could not buy or sell let alone geta quote,good company

 

[jotekfinance]

I tend to like Activtrades. Very good system. UK based but all around the world and a whole bunch of languages.

 

[nylelevi]

Okay thanks guys I'll have a look into these one too