[MischaHY]

Can anyone recommend a good guide/literature for getting into investing? Been thinking about it the last few years as we started to have a little more disposable income. Really keen to learn more.

Not sure on literature (there's probably loads out there) but lots of platforms allow you to open a demo account to have a play and get a feel for things without actually having to put down your cold hard cash.

Demo accounts might be useful for getting to grips with how the given platform works, but they're really not designed for learning about investing at all.

Mischa - I'd recommend Boring Money as a good place to start. Loads of useful info on getting started.

https://www.boringmoney.co.uk/

Thanks, that looks really useful! Time for a geeking sesh...

[RobK]

Pete - no, that makes sense. Was meant to be tongue in cheek! Guess what I was saying is that I don't think I could ever get to the point where I could put everything into one investment. I'm impressed you had that level of certainty and confidence in your decision making ability.

[Jerry Morefat]

I can't tell the full story here for fear of incriminating, but just to say I wasn't flying totally blind. You can use your imagination..

I'm imagining insider trading  . I hope I'm wrong

[shark]

Can anyone recommend a good guide/literature for getting into investing? Been thinking about it the last few years as we started to have a little more disposable income. Really keen to learn more.

Benjamin Graham’s Intelligent Investor is the value investors bible.

For growth shares Philip Fishers Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits is a classic

One up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch is lighter reading

Not read it (would be over my head) but maybe Accounting for Growth by Terry Smith would be interesting for you as an expose of the tricks public companies use to flatter their financial reporting

[shark]

Be interested to know if anyone still has any good recovery stock ideas at this late stage.

Not very racy but VLE (Volvere) is a cautious turnaround operation with a great track record of buying distressed companies cheaply turning them around and selling them for multiples of the purchase price. They have recently raised a lot of money through a placing so have a sizeable war chest to take advantage of the current market conditions. There is a lot of downside protection as their market cap is roughly equivalent to their ‘true’ NAV. There is a great thread on ADVFN if you want to look into it further. Because of some recent stupid rules it’s classed as a complex investment (it isn’t) so you can’t buy it in an ISA. I hold mine in a SIPP. It’s by far my largest holding.

[abarro81]

  I hold mine in a SIPP

Anyone have any recommendations for best SIPP platforms or are they all much of a muchness?

[shark]

I can't tell the full story here for fear of incriminating, but just to say I wasn't flying totally blind. You can use your imagination..

I'm imagining insider trading  . I hope I'm wrong

I'm imagining scuttlebutt

[shark]

  I hold mine in a SIPP

Anyone have any recommendations for best SIPP platforms or are they all much of a muchness?

I use Hargreaves Lansdowne and the service has been good when I've used their brokers to trade illiquid AIM shares. If I was opening one now Id probably go for AJ Bell as its cheaper. Don't know any others. 

[Falling Down]

As chance would have it I read this description of Bitcoin yesterday: “Imagine if keeping your car running 24/7 produced solved Sodukus that you could trade for heroin”.

I only bought it out of curiosity to see how the whole crypto thing worked and then forgot about it for several years. It was only a long time afterwards I remembered when they suddenly surged in value and I’d changed jobs by then so my email account would be long gone. The whole crypto currency thing is well fishy.

Also... what Habrich just posted is spot on. I work inside a lot of companies and the P/E ratios for many are way out of wack. We’re living in a QE/debt/stupid-money fuelled bubble at the moment in my opinion.

[Fultonius]

I've got a fair bit of my savings (as mentioned) in a stocks and shares isa, on a managed fund. Its a bit higher risk, small tech and sustainable innovations etc.

Now, we think there's a bubble and therefore a big correction due?

I've got maybe 40% of my savings in plain old savings accounts. Considering overpaying some mortgage, but also considering holding some cash to buy some stocks if things go low.

Happy to ride out a dip on my s&s isa, but wondering if that's the best plan?

[Johnny Brown]

The whole crypto currency thing is well fishy...

We’re living in a QE/debt/stupid-money fuelled bubble at the moment in my opinion.

 

I've posted this before but if you don't get the joke have a read of this:

https://breedlove22.medium.com/money-bitcoin-and-time-part-1-of-3-b4f6bb036c04

[Falling Down]

Thanks Habrich, more nuanced than my late night after wine broad brush opinion.  I'd also argue it's tech-adjacent firms to watch out for too.  Ocado vs. Tesco for example.  When a CEO announces 'We're not an automobile/office rental/gardening/airline/hotel/supermarket business, we're a technology business' they're chasing those frothy valuations. 

<Off topic, sorry Pete> Thanks JB, I'll have a read of that later. Perhaps similar to this?.

[Johnny Brown]

Not at all similar, remember that piece and it's great but doesn't really leave you any clearer on the point or practice of crypto.

[CrimpyMcCrimpface]

.

[ali k]

Is this whole thread just a bit part in Pete’s own pump and dump scheme? How many other forums across the Internet have had this mining company’s name just casually dropped into the conversation? 

[petejh]

For the speculation stuff I'm always interested in how it gets onto people's radars.

Are you actively researching this stuff and if so how? Trawling the whole AIM index for opportunities would seem like a full time job.

Thought I'd add info about some of the ways I research information.. but firstly it should go without saying that anyone who invests based solely on something said by an anonymous stranger on the internet probably deserves to lose their money.. I only use the methods below as launching points for my own research.

LSE forum
A bit like UKB / UKC for shares.. with all the good and bad points. LSE has some brilliant very knowledgeable and relatively transparent contributors; it also has more than its share of truly dire posters involved in childish bickering and name-calling, pumpers, fear-mongers and others with their own agendas. If you get a free account you can simply use the filter so that you focus on what the most useful posters have to offer. These days I just click on the posters I know to be knowledgeable and don't waste my time on the rest. If anyone's interested I can list the best 15 or so knowledgeable posters from the GGP chat page. Once you work out who are the helpful people you'll often pick up on other companies of interest through them. 

I completely avoid ADVFN, life's too short for that shit.

Private Telegram investing groups
Some of the shares I invest in have private investor's groups on Telegram. These can work well for sharing info and hopefully avoid a lot of the bickering that goes on from more widely-used LSE forums. I often get sight of private broker research notes and investment bank analyst's reports intended for clients only via private telegram groups.
On the GGP telegram group we keep one step ahead of the company's official interim exploration drilling updates by using Sentinel satellite images updated every 5 or so days to keep track of the movement of the drill rigs out in the Aus desert.

Twitter
I'm don't use twitter for anything else but it's good for investing. It can be overwhelming as there are many, many bull-shitters on there, so I limit myself to following just 6 or 7 people for technical analysis of charts who've proved themselves legit over time. Twitter is excellent for technical chart analysis if you find the good people. I limit myself to people who've proved themselves over the years and I only follow people who are prepared to back-test their TA calls and are happy to show when they get it wrong as well as when they called it correctly. I only use charts/TA to back-up my own research, never on its own except for bitcoin/crypto - which in my experience behaves well for using TA to make investment decisions as crypto isn't news-driven as much as growth companies are. Finally I always try to find at least two people's TA predictions for a company, but sometimes this isn't possible for small niche shares.
My TA skills are limited but I've found just by following others I've learnt the basics of fib levels for rises and retracements, convergences, and recognition of the common patterns. I'm interested in learning more about harmonics and fib levels.
People I follow are:
Northstar is my go-to for TA on gold, crypto and GGP. Many other shares that I don't follow. Claims to be a professional meteorologist.. dunno, but his TA predictions are very good.
Saharascharts for gold, crypto, GGP, others. Batshit crazy god-botherer but good charts.
Swazerscharts mostly for his take on GGP, but loads of other new ideas. He's pretty good despite not caring about having a clue about the fundamentals of the companies he's looking at.
PamplonaTrader for general mining sector - great knowledgeable poster, I get a lot of my trading ideas from Pamplona and he's brave enough to share his top 10 picks at the start of a year and then review how they did at the end.

Not so much for technicals but for general research, I also follow:
Justin Waite for Ilika, TWD and other new ideas
Paddygall for Greatland Gold. Bit of a ledge among investors of GGP. He's good at finding out snippets of info.

There are a lot of pumpers and dumpers on twitter - beware! The names above are genuine and transparent, and Pamplona is particularly good for calling out bull shitters. I'd avoid investing in any mining stock off the back of any hype by the likes of characters such as David Lenigras.. there are many others like him.

Regards learning TA I've had the follwoing two books recommended to me:
Fibonacci trading
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fibonacci-Trading-Master-Price-Advantage/dp/007149815X
TA for Dummies
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=technical+analysis+for+dummies&adgrpid=52869440106&gclid=CjwKCAiAo5qABhBdEiwAOtGmbjpbJVyoVupEN4rGMfe6o9H5YUW2CLJzJny3zdkYiD4r-ZSQMbVl6RoCNpEQAvD_BwE&hvadid=259110088303&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007423&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=11836469511504809676&hvtargid=kwd-299008182620&hydadcr=18518_1817325&tag=googhydr-21&ref=pd_sl_1ejvk3kegp_e

Newsletters
I subscribe to one weekly newsletter, by Taylor Dart. His focus is gold and silver explorers/miners but he also touches on other sectors, mostly in the US and Canada, and give a good weekly overview of overall US market sentiment. He also writes a lot of overview articles on Seeking Alpha but his newsletter is more in depth.

Seeking Alpha
General overview articles by paid contributors, many of them invested in the companies they're writing about. OK, but I'd never invest based on an SA article.

CEO.ca
Good chat forum for Canadian and US stocks with some knowledgeable contributors (and some dickheads like everywhere else)

Hotcopper
Good chat forum for Australian mining sector.

[Fultonius]

How do you let go of bad decisions?

Current price of Ethereum is actually up on my very first bigger purchase, and about 6 times what it was when I bought  more in May.

Mainly annoyed that my initial plan was a reasonable one, but then I got caught up in the day to day then bottled it.

[petejh]

I tend to never regret and never look back. Sell the losers and let the winners run until time to take profits.
But so much depends on your planned timescale. There comes a point when you need to sell to make use of funds.. can't live off fresh air. What was your bad decision, selling ETH when it dropped instead of holding for the bounce? I'd treat that as a valuable lesson where you've learned the behaviour of the currency and your own emotions when things are dropping. I'd recommend following Northstar's chart for Etherium - not just his most recent chart but his long-term stuff - and see how you feel about his predictions.

edit. perhaps if you have less invested you'd have less to worry about during drops, and more chance of being willing to hold for the longer-term rises. Depends on your anxiety levels, everyone's different. I think an ability to detach emotionally from losses or gains is useful.

[sdm]

Maybe slightly off topic but what platforms are people using? I have so far stuck to the usual biggies (HL, II, IG) just because they are known beasts. Have people tried the zero commission/fee sites such as e-toro, trading 212 etc? Are the spreads acceptable? Any other issues to consider?

I have an account with Trading212 because it seemed to be the best value for option for what I wanted: I have a S&S ISA elsewhere for tracker funds and ETFs but I wanted to use a small amount for some higher risk individual stocks which weren't on offer there.

I wanted to put in relatively small, regular sums but wanted the option to be able to make a few trades per month and wanted to buy some low cap stocks. The fees at a lot of the more established brokers would have killed a chunk of any returns I made. If I manage sufficient growth, the plan is to switch platforms later on to somewhere with fixed fees once those fees are a smaller percentage of the portfolio and once they start to represent a smaller amount than the spread on 212.

The buy/sell spread is typically a shade under 1%. There is also a small additional spread when buying/selling stocks that are listed in a different currency. For very low cap stocks, you may struggle to fill limit or stop-limit orders so market price may be your only choice.

Stay away from Trading212's CFD account, they sound dodgy as. The fee structure at places like Trading212 means nobody should be considering their CFD account anyway. If you know enough to be taking that risk, you are going to be investing sums that are large enough for the more established brokers to work out cheaper.

Etoro's currency conversion is expensive unless you deposit/withdraw in USD, they also charge a small exit fee. They offer fewer of the stocks that I was interested in.

Freetrade's fees and spread would have worked out more expensive for me, they have a much smaller availability of stocks and ETFs, and they are missing a lot of basic features.

[Coops_13]

The US has a great number of commission free platforms with lots of free stock offers to entice users - I've made good use of the free stock offers. I currently use RobinHood which I think is great - really good UI. There have been issues (all over the news) but I haven't been privy to them. They were planning on expanding to UK but have since shelved those plans, shame as I was hoping to get lots of referrals.... 

[galpinos]

Surely the big question is, will Pete divesting his "knowledge" on UKB make this thread as influential as r/WallStreetBets?

(Really good thread, very interesting to see what people are doing/platforms they are using)

[teestub]

Surely the big question is, will Pete divesting his "knowledge" on UKB make this thread as influential as r/WallStreetBets?

Was just reading about how they are in the process of bankrupting a hedge fund that was betting against Game Stop, crazy shit https://mobile.twitter.com/williamlegate/status/1354166397874671616

[seankenny]

Can anyone recommend a good guide/literature for getting into investing? Been thinking about it the last few years as we started to have a little more disposable income. Really keen to learn more.

I enjoyed “The Long and the Short of It” by John Kay. You’ll have an opinion on the efficient market hypothesis by the end!

“Fooled by Randomness” by Nicholas Naseem Taleb is good and important (even if NNT himself is insufferable). Would be interested to hear the opinion of a stats and probability expert on his work, but for us punters it seems very useful.

[Jerry Morefat]

Was just reading about how they are in the process of bankrupting a hedge fund that was betting against Game Stop, crazy shit https://mobile.twitter.com/williamlegate/status/1354166397874671616

It's been interesting watching this unfold. Although I don't think Melvin is going to go bankrupt as it looks like Citadel and Point 72 are going to bail it out. https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1q8swwwtgr7nt/Buried-in-Reddit-the-Seeds-of-Melvin-Capital-s-Crisis

[Falling Down]

Thought this might of interest.   Veteran investor Jeremy Grantham’s thoughts on the ever expanding bubble in US markets.

https://www.gmo.com/europe/research-library/waiting-for-the-last-dance/