Long term investment question

[Gil3000]

Hi,

I am new to the forum and completely new to trading from the UK (yet to make my first purchase) and have put a fair amount of time into reading various posts about how the whole thing works, although my knowledge is still extremely limited.

I've decided there are a few companies I want to invest in, but all over the period of about 1-2 months (about £100-£200 per company if this has any impact on it). I've looked at various brokers to do this but they all seem to charge "overnight fees" which obviously wouldn't be ideal if I intend on keeping stock over a long period of time. Is this something I have to deal with, or a plan or something I have to choose, or a specific type of broker?

 

[Jack o'Clubs]

Spread betting companies will charge overnight fees but 'proper' brokers won't. Who have you been looking at? Be careful on fees and think about size: a £10 commission will need you to make 10% just to cover your round-trip costs. You'd be better with fewer, larger positions I think or you'll just be killed by the costs.

 

[Gil3000]

Spread betting companies will charge overnight fees but 'proper' brokers won't. Who have you been looking at? Be careful on fees and think about size: a £10 commission will need you to make 10% just to cover your round-trip costs. You'd be better with fewer, larger positions I think or you'll just be killed by the costs.

Ah that makes a lot of sense re: percentages.

Brokers I've been looking at, I've probably been looking in the wrong places since it seems to be alot of sites which are heavily advertised or perhaps have affiliate costs with sites that review various platforms.

I understand you might not be able to directly direct me to one or two, but perhaps know a trustworthy site with a list of brokers that would be worth looking at based on what I'm hoping to do? Based on this probably invest in a couple for £500 or so.

 

[Jack o'Clubs]

Assuming you're Uk based and investing rather than trading, then you want low comms and no inactivity fees as much as anything. Use your high street bank as starting point, they're actually not bad for this kind of thing, eg Halifax £12.50 comms no account fees. Or IG's new(ish) stockbroking service seems ok.

 

[Gil3000]

Literally in the middle of an account swap from HSBC to Santander but for various reasons am having to put this off for a month, with my official moving day not until 6th July (little far away for my liking, would prefer to be trading before that date).

In this case presume IG would be the route to go?

 

[malaguti]

Literally in the middle of an account swap from HSBC to Santander but for various reasons am having to put this off for a month, with my official moving day not until 6th July (little far away for my liking, would prefer to be trading before that date).

In this case presume IG would be the route to go?

Just be aware of a couple of things..
some spreadbetters, like IG for certain stocks will allow a forward contract, so you pay a slightly wider spread, without the overnight fees
Also Ayondo used to provide the ability to spreadbet and you can control the margin such that you had all the outlay and they were foregoing any overnight charges
so there are alternatives

with regard to a more established broker IG were charging quite a high fee. the 12.50 mentioned by Jacko is very expensive compared to iweb which is only £5 and no activity fee so i can't think why you want to pay almost 3 times as much
there are others for about 7.50 if I'm not mistaken
so shop around.
brokers will change their terms. inactivity fees are becoming the norm, but you can move your money. I do all the time.

Hope this helps, but there are alternatives much cheaper including spreadbetting. All depends what you want to trade

 

[Gil3000]

with iweb the £200 one off account opening charge sounds pretty huge though considering im only looking to operate with £1,000 max and may be for a limited amount of time initially - unless I'm reading it wrong and it means that is the minimum deposit?

 

[malaguti]

with iweb the £200 one off account opening charge sounds pretty huge though considering im only looking to operate with £1,000 max and may be for a limited amount of time initially - unless I'm reading it wrong and it means that is the minimum deposit?

f***!!! that was only £25 a few months ago. My bad.
Then try the future contract alternative with IG as Ayondo doesn't look like its continuing the margin adjustment functioanlity