Back at uni i made about 40% profit in about 6 months buying and selling shares in next, orange, coffee republic and rage software. Was quite fun and paid for my flights to Japan. Didnt do anything till about 5 months ago when i bought a load of company shares on the share scheme for my old company. Ive made 70% profit on those in about 4 months.... Havent cashed them in but ill use it as a bit of cash for a rainy day. The UK stock market has made quite alot of progress in 12 months ive heard - although buying gold is where its at apparently, and energy stocks
it defo seems to be on the up but i donbt know much about, do u know what happens if u havesgares in a company and they are then "bought" or took over by another company? how does taht affect your shares
Your a winner normally!! Thats the idea..... Smaller banks get bought out by bigger banks so value increases. Same for other companies. Talk of takeovers fuels the stock market........
A company about to be bought means the stocks go up alot in price - firstly everyone knows that its on the cards so they buy the stock and the price goes up. Then the company looking to buy them out needs to get a controlling share so they buy all the stocks at a premium OVER the market rate. Its nearly always a win/win situation for you.
but what if the buying company disovles the smaller company into its own name? what happens then? hte old company wont exist anymore so the shares wont............ do they have to pay out a set fee?
A complete takeover means usually that you HAVE to sell your shares - but they will buy them at a price over and above the market rate, so your not getting ripped off. The only downside is if you had shares that might have been worth 10 dollars a share, then say the price dives to 2 dollars a share and then someone takes them over and gives you all 3 bucks a share. You havent been ripped off in the traditional sense, but you might have lost money depending on how you look at it. Alternatively you will get a share in the new company in exchange for what you had in the old one - for instance maybe half a share in company a for a single share in company b. ... once again though, you will usually get more for your money either way.
If you want to dabble in the stock market and make good returns, you have to put large investment into it. There's no point buying say 100 shares at say £1 each, then the value of the shares increasing to £1.50 per share over say a three month period because you'll only make £50 in the three months. That's not a good return. There's a new thing people do now on websites like www.cantorindex.co.uk It's a betting exchange. Rather than buy and sell shares, you can put money on whether they will increase or decrease in price. (E.G. You can put down a bet that states for every point the FTSE goes up in a day you receive £5 per point. However, if it goes down you lose £5 per point). High risk but large rewards. I just bet on the football. It's far easier. I had £400 on Chelsea to win yesterday and made £160 profit. Not bad for a Chelsea win.
It called financial spread betting, and carries very large risk...but yes if you get it right carries large rewards...but there are a very high percentage of losers compared to winners .. read this site for some good insight into buying stocks and shares through betting....like you said you could bet £1 per penny rise on a share or index and I think it carries roughly the equivalent weight of owning 100 shares... but unlike buying shares the normal way all your profit is tax free as it is betting.... http://financial-spread-betting.com/ I forgot to add the other great thing about spread betting shares is you can make money by betting that a share is going down instead of up...so if you think there is a company which is way overvalued (like Google!!) then you can bet on a fall...
I have a friend who gets some good share tips/ideas sometimes so Ive only really tested them out with a free demo account with spreads (all the companies seem to offer them so you can get used to how it works). but I have bought shares in the traditional way a few times before and had a few good wins and a reasonable loss but overall up on what I started with....
Im not ragging on spread betting at all - but please bear in mind it has more in common with going to the bookies than traditional 'investing'. The only thing to bear in mind is that you put your balls on a block and as much as you can make astronomical amounts of money in a short amount of time - you can owe it to someone if things cock up. And if my memory serves me right - its not like you lose what you gamble as well, you can put yourself down to lose/gain on money you dont even have. Not to be taken lightly.
no you can only lose what you deposit in the account. If you read their rules and regs (which I have extensively in the name of research) they will sell or close your bets for you automatically if you are losing enough to zero your account.. Unless you apply for a credit account..but that would be silly I reckon. But I agree its not to be taken lightly
A 50% is a good return at any level of investment. You'd not get it in any savings account over 3 months.
Yes it is, but my point was that you need to invest large to get the best out of it. I would highly recommend it ahead of savings accounts too.