Author Topic: Shares...F@@K!  (Read 129766 times)

  • Offline zpyder

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Shares...F@@K!
on: May 21, 2012, 13:00:34 PM
I don't know whether when talk of shares has come up before, I mentioned my dabbling back at college.

Back in 2004 or so I had £300 of birthday money I decided to invest. I saw a company called As Seen on Screen, and thought it was a movie memorabilia company. They were like 4p a share so I opted to get a load of them, thinking they were so low it could only go up.

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=ASC.L#symbol=asc.l;range=my;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;

6 months later I sold them for £600. I kept £300 and reinvested the other £300, which didn't do too well.

Every now and again I check to see how ASOS are doing. if I'd have kept the shares for another 6-12 months I'd have made a few thousand pounds from my £300 investment.

I just checked again, and unless my maths is wonky, I'd have made £112500 from that £300.

Ouch :(

  • Offline Pete

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Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #1 on: May 21, 2012, 13:02:46 PM
Blimey. Never look back.
I know sh*ts bad right now with all that starving bullsh*t and the dust storms and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings.

  • Offline matt5cott

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Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #2 on: May 21, 2012, 13:53:37 PM
ASOS did indeed go from strength to strength and are huge now but you still doubled your money back in 2004, and would you have kept the shares for 8 years?

All if buts and maybes, as per above, don't look back, easier said than done I know!

  • Offline zpyder

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Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #3 on: May 21, 2012, 13:56:51 PM
Indeed.  I just find it so annoying as it was even a mistake, I didn't research them at all before buying, whilst the ones I did research never made anything, and lost money instead!

It's making me want to dabble again. I know some people here do, I'm curious what brokers you use? I used to use ComDirect, which became SquareTrade or something. When I started it was free but £12.50 per transaction, and I closed my account when they wanted to make an account subscription.

Ideally I'm looking for a nice online interface with cheap fees as I'll only be working with small amounts of money.
Last Edit: May 21, 2012, 14:53:32 PM by zpyder #187;

Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #4 on: May 21, 2012, 14:45:19 PM
Ouch

I used to mess about with a barclays stock brokers account, was expensive, monthly fees and transaction fees.

I still have 86 suspended northen rock shares from my efforts.. lol

  • Offline zpyder

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Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #5 on: May 21, 2012, 15:07:51 PM
http://www.moneysupermarket.com/shares/

Useful :)

Looks like there are some companies that it's £5-10 a trade, one seems too good to be true at £6 a trade, will have to research it tonight!

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  • Offline Clock'd 0Ne

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Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #6 on: May 21, 2012, 16:22:59 PM
That's a real wounder, but hindsight and all that... you know there's no such thing as a sure thing in stocks, it couldn't have gone either way.

  • Offline Eagle

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Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #7 on: May 21, 2012, 18:00:18 PM
This'll make you feel better:

Ron Wayne sold back his 10% of Apple after 12 days with the company, recouping $800. Those shares are now worth an estimated $35 billion

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/10/ron_wayne_apple.php

 :gag:

  • Offline matt5cott

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Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #8 on: May 22, 2012, 09:18:52 AM
I'm sure there have been several threads on shares on tek before, but they always stumbled with where was the best place to buy online, so zypder I amongst others I'm sure are interested to hear your findings if indeed you had any luck :D

  • Offline zpyder

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Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #9 on: May 22, 2012, 09:32:37 AM
I tried registering last night with Traders Own. First registration failed and the error message was a white screen with a line of text. I re-registered but for a basic trading account (as opposed to a shares and savings isa trading account) and that worked.

However after a quick look around their website it looked just how it has been described by some review sites, a trading platform for the twitter/facebook generation. It's all centred around social networking. In a way this could work with people sharings tips and the likes, but I just felt that it was open to a lot of abuse potentially for false information etc.

The site was more confusing than needed for trying to find latest stock info too.

Plus the security was laughable, email+ 6 digit numeric pin, so it wouldn't take much for someone to get to your account through number crunching.

On the plus side it's £6 a trade, so 2nd cheapest out there.

I opted for Halifax which is £11.95 a trade but no account fees. Reasons being security, the fact it's actually a bank, and once I'd registered , the information presented is quite powerful. When I had SelfTrade either the options were very basic, or stock dealing has come a long way.

I ended up spending several hours last night looking at stocks. Lots of options, heat maps to show growth/shrink industries, and a filter that frankly has way too many options for me, I just wanted to see the cheapest stocks out there.

I ended up buying 14400 shares in expansys this morning. They're only a ~2p at the moment, I doubt they'll go up by much but if they bump to 2.5p I'll net £50 or something. I'm not entirely convinced it'll work out but worth a punt. I was hoping to find something that would be likely to profit from the olympics this year. Dixons shares are "cheap" and I pondered whether they'd make money on HD TV sales etc. Expansys has recently broken into the Asian markets according to news sources, so who knows.

One thing I don't like is that the halifax site lists stockbroker tips (EG, buy, sell, neutral etc). But when you actually look at these in detail some tips are dated back to 2009/2010 so way out of date. Others are more recent, but still, very dodgy to follow.
Last Edit: May 22, 2012, 09:34:44 AM by zpyder #187;

Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #10 on: May 22, 2012, 20:15:28 PM
take a look at cyan
potentially could go through the roof (was trading 50p+ 3years ago)
they develop smart metering - my cousin writes the source code.

Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #11 on: May 22, 2012, 21:09:09 PM
I currently hold just over 5k shares in Logica.

Bought at 54p each, the current guide price by brokers is sitting at 100p.

Sitting at around 68p now. A month or so ago it was at 130+p

Fingers crossed it climbs again and I'm actually around to cash in when it happens.

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2

  • Offline zpyder

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Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #12 on: May 22, 2012, 22:20:39 PM
take a look at cyan
potentially could go through the roof (was trading 50p+ 3years ago)
they develop smart metering - my cousin writes the source code.

I very nearly bought into them this morning. Regretting not now, as they've kept on climbing today whilst expansys dropped a tad ><

  • Offline zpyder

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Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #13 on: May 23, 2012, 08:20:15 AM
I ended up selling my Expansys shares and buying into Cyan. I pretty much instantly regretted my expansys shares. So now basically from my £300 I'm down £50 due to 3x £11.95 fees and a slight drop in expansys. To recoup my money and make £10 Cyan just needs to climb .25p, which if it doesn't drop in the next few days, should be possible...

Re: Shares...F@@K!
Reply #14 on: May 23, 2012, 08:24:27 AM
take a look at cyan
potentially could go through the roof (was trading 50p+ 3years ago)
they develop smart metering - my cousin writes the source code.

I very nearly bought into them this morning. Regretting not now, as they've kept on climbing today whilst expansys dropped a tad ><

well they are about to break the chinese market - all their street lights are going to smart metering. If they get selected, they are going to sky rocket.
Also got irons in India & Brazil

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