Hi,
If you had UKP5,000 which you were willing to loose, what kind of investments could be made which might double it in say, 3 months.
I am brainstorming this idea with a friend, so even the most crazy ideas would be considered, and we are fully aware that any idea will be high risk.
e.g. One of my ideas was to buy premium bonds and keep fingers crossed - obviously the capital is not at risk here, but we are quite happy for it to be at risk.
Regds
Stick it on red at your local casino :-)
That could double it in 3 minutes, let alone three months.....
Depends on how concentrated you would like the nerves/tension to be! And you won't pay any commission charges or capital gains tax!
Regards, Zen
This is just my opinion of course, but if you were really willing to risk those £5,000, then going the premium bond route doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
I would personally open a stock trading account in the US (the change is quite good at the moment) and buy a few stocks. Of course you're taking some risk, but the risk/ration is still reasonable if you know what you're doing.
If you had suicidal tendencies, you could go for options where you could quadruple your money or lose it all, but frankly I don't think the risk/ration is all that interesting.
In the end, it's really up to you. What applies to me might not apply to you. It all depends on your own circumstances.
Why would anyone willing to LOSE their 5000?
I would rather invest in those highly undervalued stocks. Or blow the 5000 on some luxurious holiday. :PpP
If the post is a serious one then wait for Euro 2004 and back against the English soccer side.
I've made almost 60,000 since 1988 backing the national side's opponents.
The rationale is simple: the odds offered by British bookmakers are stilted in favour of the opposition by the sheer weight of money wagered by overweight skinheads with tattoos who don't believe our national side can do any wrong.
Are the arbitrage possibilities by backing England at a foreign bookies (plenty around on the net) and backing their opponents in England?
I doubt it - the amount of skew towards to English must be quite minor, perhaps offering England at 11/2 instead of 6/1.
Good point though! Have you got any money against England to win the Rugby World Cup?
Regards, Zen
I had a look at backing both Celtic and Rangers to win the SPL. I worked out that in order to get a(n almost) guaranteed win of £10, I would have to put £5 on Rangers and £5.45 on Celtic. I could turn it into a guaranteed win by putting a few pennies on each of the other teams. The odds may have changed now, but the principal remains the same.
So you would have had to pay £10.45 to get an almost guarenteed win of £10 ?
Regards, Zen
Some form of betting, eg on a horse, football match etc, or in a casino would probably be the most likely way to get your desired result, obviously with the risk of losing it all.
You won't lose the capital, but premium bonds must be one of the least likely ways to achieve your objective of doubling your money. All you're gambling is the interest on the 5000, the current rate IIRC is about 2.5% so you'd be gambling about 10 per month, and you have to wait a complete month before being entered into the draw. So you'd only be entered for 2 draws.
In my last premium bonds booklet, it says there's a prize for every 28,500 invested. The vast majority are low value prizes (50 & 100) - there were
597749 prizes of 50-1000 and 53 prizes of 5000-1,000,000.So your chances of winning a prize of 5000 or more is about (2*5000/28500) * (53/597802) = about 1 in 32,000.
My brother used to work for a bookies and he looked into this seriously - he found if it wasn't for betting taxes (in the days when betting was taxed) you could actually guarantee a profit most of the time. But that was in the days before the internet was widely used for betting - I doubt it would be possible now.
Indeed. The emergence of sites like
Regards, Zen
The simplest way would be to walk into a casino and stake it all on red. You could of course look for good bets with bookies or betfair.com but this is subjective.
Buy a copy of the Investors Chronicle, look at their share recommendations, and invest it in the smallest company in their weekly list (or whichever one you fancy).
Before you do this with any "real" money, keep a track of how this week's recommendations perform over the next few months. They used to be pretty good at tipping shares, although I've not read the IC for a while. Most of their tips are companies that have produced good interim results and are expecting good final results. As finals come out up to six months after interims, maybe 3 months is not a good time period for this strategy.
Putting it all into premium bonds is a good idea although you would probably win maybe 100 in the 3 months.
Traded options can produce good gains, but unless you take the time learning how to use them you will be more likely to lose all your money.
In my view, however, it is not good practice to set such a goal. You might be disappointed if your 5k turned into only 6k in 3 months. Outperforming the FTSE might be a better goal.
"DP" wrote
You'd have to be rather lucky getting 100 in 3 months from 5,000 premium bonds!
Something like (3/12) x 2.5% x 5000 = 31;
Alternatively, you might "expect" 5,000/30,000 prizes each month - ie expect to get either zero or one prize from 3 draws (averaging about half a prize per 3 draws holding 5,000); from the two draws you'd be in during 3 months, expect something like: (2/3) x 0.5 x 50 = only 17!! [25 if you were actually in 3 draws.]
Put a client into PSBs (6000) a few months back.
So far she has won 100 in 2 months = 50 September 2003 (1st available month); 50 October 2003.
Another client won 25,000. Perhaps I should be on commission. :)
"Doug Ramage" wrote
Out of how many clients in total you've done this with?
Unfortunately, it is not possible to be precise - several hundred?
I have been suggesting PSBs to (mainly) higher rate taxpayers for many years - but it is impossible to know whether all of them have followed my advice - some have sold their bonds also. Quite a few of them hold the maximum (for husband & wife).
I have the old maximum of 20K (and did reasonably well for the first 2 years). When the limit was upped to 30K I asked for my winnings to be re-invested. Since then I have won 2 £50 bonds, one in July and one in October, at this rate I'm looking at 4 wins in a year for a return of 1%
tim
Going off last nights performance at Old Trafford I wouldn't put any money on Rangers!
True, but if Celtic manage to get further in Europe, and Rangers don't, then this will put Celtic at a disadvantage in the SPL over Rangers due to the huge number of extra matches they have to play. That is pretty much how Rangers managed to win last year.
Given Ranger's performance at Motherwell, Livingstone, and Partick Thistle, their performance at Old Trafford didn't surprise me.
Given that this is uk.finance, we are going a bit off topic.
BeanSmart website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.