Newbie to buying shares!

Yes - don't do it unless you can afford to lose all of your money! Honestly - if you have no idea to those questions, then you really shouldn't be dabling in shares...

Start off with a fantasy portfolio. You can set one up on lots of web sites.

Then, if you wish to go live, have a look at Halifax Sharebuilder at

or the Share Company , both of whom offer low prices for small deals.

Bitstring , from the wonderful person MadCrazyNewbie said

1) Google is your friend .. both and groups.google.com. 2) With £1000 buying single company shares is pretty high risk .. you'd be better off with a collective investment of some kind .. unit trust, or Investment trust. Unless you really wanted a punt .. in which case there's this horse running in the 3.30 at ...

As the spam fairy hovered like a flatulent buzzard on Wed, 7 Jul 2004

13:33:53 +0100, GSV Three Minds in a Can sensuously caressed the keys and exposed:

THE POINT BEING THAT THERE IS NORMALLY A MINIMUM COMMISSION, BETWEEN

12-25 QUID, PLUS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BUY AND SELL PRICE, MAKING IT UNECONOMIC TO BUY LESS THAN 1K POUNDS WORTH OF SHARES PER COMPANY. cHECK OUT THOSE SITES POINTED TO BY tERRY, AND LEARN ALL YOU CAN FROM THE MOTLEY FOOL: aLL COMMENTS IN THE REPLIES SO FAR HAVE BEEN SOUND IMHO. Perverse verses, putrid poetry, diabolical doggerel...

That is by far the best advice - I did just that and set up a virtual portfolio on Egg, I invested a fantasy 15,000 back in 2001, added another

10k in 2002. So far I have lost 5k !! Needless to say, I never bought any real shares!!

For a 1,000 you should only be looking at buying shares in 1 company or 2 at most. read around the Motley Fool uk website to start and as others have said do some 'fantasy' trading for a few months before you do any actual buying and selling.

Here's something I wrote for someone else who was starting to invest and was asking about tipsheets -

hth

Daytona

There is no minimum although it would be uneconomical to invest less than, say, 500 in a single equity. There are plenty of on line brokers - shop around and you should pay around 10 per trade as commission.

Before you invest, buy this week's Investors Chronicle from your newsagents and, as has been suggested, invest "pretend" money for a few months before using any real money.

To spread your risk, rather than investing 1000 in one or two equities, consider Unit Trusts and Investment Trusts. To find what these are and to find brokers, search on Google for uk investment tutorial or something similar.

Alliance Trust ISA is another cheap scheme regularly recommended -

Our Investment Club uses ComDirect

Which we find very efficient for on-line trading and would highly recommend it - we've tried a few services over our 8 years and this is so far the best.

There are no monthly or quarterly charges, just a basic £12.50 per deal plus Gordon Brown's stamp duty of 0.5%

You can of course spend as much or as little as you want, but the lower your spend, the higher the combined dealing and stamp duty costs are as a percentage of your spend. In other words, spend £100 and your dealing £12.50 and 50 pence stamp duty, total £13 and represent 13% of your investment. Your investment will need to grow by 13% before you start breaking even.

Spend £1000 and the dealing and stamp duty is £17.50 or just 1.75% of your investment.

With just £1000 you're very much at risk since you can't realistically spread it over more than say two shares if you want to keep the dealing % down.

I'd suggest you join an investment club. ProShare at

could probably put you in touch with clubs in your area. You get all the advantages of playing the market whilst spreading your risk over a number of shares and learning from others.

Good luck

__ Richard Buttrey Grappenhall, Cheshire, UK __________________________

There is also the bid/offer spread. This varies from under 1% for footse shares to 10% or more for shares with little market.

For example, BP closed at 487p. At the close the prices you could have bought or sold the shares for were actually 487.5p or 486.75p. A difference well below 1%. You could forget about such a difference in a day or two.

However Legendary Investment (chosen for having a pretentious name, not because I follow the equity) closed at 0.55p. The spread was 0.65p - 0.45p. A difference of 30%. Such a difference could well take months or years, if ever, to be paid for by a gain.

Yes, good point. I forgot about that.

In the same category is Peel Holdings - a share that our Investment club has held for a couple of years. Before the recent announcement about it moving from the AIM market back into private hands, this had a fairly wide spread, in the order of 40-50 pence on a price of £7 when we bought it. We bought it in the expectation of gains as the Trafford Centre became a mature investment, and on the expectation that the new Doncaster / S. Yorks airport got the go ahead and would be a success. It took us about 15 months to recover the spread alone. Fortunately last week's announcement means that Peel will buy the shares back which will give us a profit of 70%

Rgds,

__ Richard Buttrey Grappenhall, Cheshire, UK __________________________

Halifax have a monthly scheme that charges 1.50 per purchase and 5 pounds for a sale. This is probably the cheapest way to build up a holding in an individual stock.

On balance, though, I'd go for an investment trust either via the Halifax scheme or via its own share saving scheme (if it has one). Investment trusts are good introduction to shares - not least because the annual reports can be very educational for newbie.

(Joining or setting up an investment club may also be a good idea).

Thom

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(1) T.Low, 97 Farmleigh Avenue, Clacton-On-Sea,Essex,CO15 4UL (2) P.Faure,13 Highfield Road,Old Swan,Liverpool,L13 3BR (3) k lovell 6 northbourne avenue dover kent ct17 oby (4) J Hester, 33 Clarendon Road, Weston super mare, North Somerset, BS23 3EE (5) I Suggs, 1 Anchorage point, Anchor and hope lane, Charlton, SE7 7SN (6) M.McGuinness, 11Broadoak,Wardley Gateshead NE10 8XF

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• STEP 2: Now take the number 1 name off the list that you see above and move the others up 1. (6 becomes 5, 5 becomes 4, etc.) And add YOUR name and address at number 6 on the list. STEP 3: Change anything you need to, but try to keep this article as close to the original as possible. Now, post your amended article to as many newsgroups and message boards as you can (You should really try to aim for at least 200 which isn't as difficult as it sounds with the 'copy and paste' feature - more on this below) I think there are close to 34,000 groups. And remember, the more you post, the more money you make! ** Keep a copy of these steps for yourself and, whenever you need money, you can use it again, and again. So, as each post is sent and the directions followed carefully, six members will be reimbursed for their participation as a List Developer with 50p : pence each. Your name will move up the list geometrically so that when your name reaches the No1 position you will be receiving thousands of Pounds in CASH!!! What an opportunity for only £3.

*DIRECTIONS FOR HOW TO POST TO NEWSGROUPS* : STEP 1) You do not need to re-type this entire letter to do your own posting. Simply put your cursor at the top of this document and highlight all of it. Select 'copy' from the edit menu. This will copy the entire letter into the computer's memory. STEP 2) Open a blank 'notepad' file or a blank email and place your cursor at the top of the blank page. From the 'edit' menu select 'paste'. This will paste a copy of the letter into notepad or a blank email so that : you can add your name to the list. STEP 3) Save your new notepad file as a .txt. file or save your email with the document now on it. STEP 4) Search for various news groups (on-line forums, message boards, discussions groups) using a search engine or however you like. STEP 5) Visit these message boards etc and post this article as a new message by highlighting the text of this letter you will have saved, and selecting 'copy' and then 'paste' from the edit menu. (paste this document on the message board) : Fill in the Subject line, this will be the header that everyone sees as they scroll through the list of postings in a particular group. Make it something intriguing that will make people want to read your message. : Click the post message button. You're done with your first one! Congratulations...THAT'S IT! All you have to do is jump to different newsgroups and post away, after you get the hang of it, it will take only take you a few seconds for each newsgroup! You will begin receiving money within days!.

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**Remember** Play FAIRLY and HONESTLY and this will really work. DONT play honestly and fairly and it WONT. Good luck in your new business!!! How to turn £3 into £5,000! Or more! Do it!!

MY E-MAIL ADDRESS is snipped-for-privacy@aol.com

Send me a message and tell me how SUCCESSFUL you have been !!!