Have you ever invested in shares?

[YogaMama66]

Have you ever invested? I’m thinking of making a modest (10k) investment in the stock market and fancy Apple. Done some research and established my medium risk comfort level. For context, I’ve been organising my finances recently, and thought I’d like to try it out. I know investments can go down as well as up!

An ISA is just an instrument to avoid tax. It's not an investment in itself

OP, I wouldn't recommend putting £10k into one company's shares. That's very risky. Apple is a solid company but do you not feel you've missed the boat on huge growth? If you like big companies like that what about a fund that tracks the top companies in the US or the world?

I use a company/app called Freetrade. It's effectively free to use for their basic account (you can upgrade for more stocks, ISAs).

I've been dripping what is my weekly coffee money into it for a year or so, as the minimum trade amount is £2, and building up slowly. It's been quite the education actually. I'd recommend it for getting a feel for the whole thing before committing large amounts of money. I had visions of being wildly successful as I'm good at maths and I read the news, so how hard could it be...

I do find it completely fascinating though, watching the stocks fluctuate and then matching it up with current affairs, and I do get a rush when one of my stocks spikes.

Oh gosh OP, certainly don't get into crypto thinking it's a medium risk investment.

Put £100 in just to play around with it because it's an interesting social phenomenon but definitely don't put your savings in!

Warning - negative note coming in
Tried shares when first earning enough to generate savings. Bit of a disaster.
Sorry but ever since then, I’ve referred to the Stock Exchange as the posh (or rich) man’s (or woman’s) betting shop.
Premium Bonds have been better for me plus I can increase or reduce my holding at any time. Never won any of the £1million prizes but a steady trickle of wins. It is another betting shop but my money cannot be lost.

Stocks and shares isa all the way

S&S ISA, vanguard or something similarly low fee. All world, diversified.

Stay away from stock picking and stay away from crypto.

Unless, for you, this is like putter a tenner on the grand national for fun.

There is so much info out there - the UK personal finance Reddit, podcasts like Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You to be Rich, books like The Slow Path to Wealth...all with solid advice.

I work in investing. Just to echo what PPs have said, don't put all your eggs in one basket and buy Apple shares!

It's up by over 50% year to date. Tech stocks (generally) had a torrid 2022 but have had somewhat of a recovery this year. But it's very finely poised and they could well fall back.

It's really difficult picking investments at the moment as inflation isn't under control and interest rate hikes don't help most equities. I'm personally not a massive fan of ETFs as there's nowhere to hide in a downturn. But they'd be a better option than putting it all in Apple.

Just to clarify that you can hold Apple shares in a S&S ISA. I think other posters are referring to fund based ISAs as the ISA part is just a tax wrapper to hold investments.

Definitely use your 20k annual ISA allowance. Put it into Vanguard - a Lifestrategy fund - the higher the number the more risk/potential return. Or into S&P 500, then you are investing in a huge range of companies, it's all about diversifying risk so I wouldn't put everything into one company like Apple.

short answer yes. i have TWO apple shares.
long story: from my first few years of employment (i'm now 65) i was encouraged to put money into the canadian registered retirement saving plan which is a bank led portfolio of various stocks (you don't get to choose).
till 2008 it rose steadily and nicely, then crashed to less than half it's value (from 223K to 98K)
now 15 years later and it was struggling to maintain over 200K. and yet monthly these "investors" charged me fees for "managing" this portfolio :(.
after chatting to a friend i decided to take over the portfolio.
i switched my holdings to a self investment web site. there were 64 holdings...a bit daunting and many in the red (meaning i had lost money on them), some like my apple shares are tiny tiny amounts (i also have two; amazon, costco, and 4 mastercard and visa)
today i'm pleased with my portfolio: currently 38 various shares, plus several bank bonds mostly at 5% interest. it gained in value and i'm not bleeding money out of it.
i have my eye on three or four that are irrationally irritating me and i'm trying to hold off dumping them daily.
the final numbers 40+ years in and only gained $47K on $170K of invested money.

great shares that have done well for me. S&P500, JPMorgan Chase, Waste Management (yup a garbage company!!), Dollarama (i guess when times get tough people buy cheap stuff), Franco Nevada (a precious metal mining group), yes i have Microsoft as well.

i don't need the money but sure would like to see $250K (my goal number as a 30 year old investor).

Like everyone else on here says, don't put all of your funds into one stock.

I would recommend ETFs....there are many available with various different features and/or risk levels, The main advantage is that they focus on different combinations of stocks/bonds and shares in different markets/types of industry, ie they are naturally more diversified without you needing to do all the research and make all the trades yourself.

ISAs are also a good option because any gains on the amount you're looking at investing would be tax-free (assuming you're UK-based).

Or you can put your shares or funds into a SIPP and you get the tax top up from the government as well as being income tax and CGT tax free (like an ISA). But you can't access the money until you retire.

Vanguard or nutmeg Isa that tracks the whole stock market is the way to go.

Do NOT do crypto. It is a pyramid scheme.

Isa...tax free...portfolio of varied shares then you don't have all your eggs in one basket. Between us the most we've earnt is £47k. But we have over £1m in isas..you invest they grow...

Another vote for an index tracker in a Vanguard (or other low cost platform) S&S ISA.

Almost certainly more likely to increase in value over time than a single share.

Apple on it's own is incredibly risky. What if too many people decide that changing their overpriced 2 YO phone is a mugs game and keep the perfectly decent one they have?

I have about 10k in a nutmeg LISA. They do ISAs as well. It's very much "Investing for dummies" so suits me just fine. I don't have to know what I'm doing or monitor stocks or rise/fall. I think it's what people call 'diversified' and I know it's robo-investing where things are considered on a massive scale by computers looking at algorithms. And if the market go tits up (thanks Liz Truss you arsehole!) and things are looking shaky they shift stock to cash or government bonds or something.

Once a year, or more often if I want, I do a questionnaire to reassess my personal level of risk-averse and nervousness. I'm currently 4/10 for taking risk, which my Mum and Grandad were horrified about as Grandad only ever went as high as 3 with his investments, and it made my Mum so nervous as she won't go above 2/10!

I know Hargreaves Landsdown or whatever they're called do a very similar product. I think I only went with Nutmeg in the end because they had a nicer logo at the time. So yes, nutmeg really is investments for dummies! 🤣

I'd read the Girls That Invest book and listen to their podcasts before you do any investing. And definitely don't put it all in one stock, you want a diverse portfolio.

Financial climate is way bad at the moment, don’t take risks.

I'd echo people who say to diversify for sure.

I grab what I can afford to lose and put it into stocks that I like the look of, I have no rhyme or reason to it, and my plan (this is for fun not strategic wealth) is just to see how well or badly I do compared to the market. I'm doing fine, two big losses but they were High risk gambles and everything else seems to be rocking along nicely.

You can make it essentially a second career, reading and listening to tips and podcasts and such, then managing it yourself, you can pay someone else to invest for you (which I would probably do with the majority of your money) or you can chuck stuff at the wall for 5 years and see what sticks. It depends on your personal level of risk.

Actually, if OP does not need the money, the best time to invest is when the market is shaky. Any short term volatility is just paper losses and does not affect the OP as she waits for the upswing.

Baron Rothschild is oft quoted as saying the best time to buy is “when there is blood in the streets.”

But diversify so as to reduce risk. Not single stocks.

"Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful" WB

Nope, be safe not sorry

No, I don't gamble. That 10K I'd lock away in a high interest savings account.

No risk, no reward.

Anyone who put money in 'safe' cash deposits or premium bonds over the last 20 years have lost out spectacularly. A beneficiary of quantitative easing following the financial crisis in 2007-8 has been stocks and shares. The S&P 500 index rose more than 300% over that time. That means any investment in the index of $100 at the start of the crisis would today be worth more than $400.

Anyone following the 'be safe not sorry' strategy would have lost out on some huge returns, returns which exceed the other investors' darling, UK property which only went up a more modest 80% over the same period. Interest on cash savings would be negligible.

It is a mystery to me why more people don't invest in S&S using an ISA. So long as you can hold and your time horizon for investment is long, it is a pretty good bet. I have consistently invested small sums for my dcs (oldest now 20) using S&S ISAs - they both now have healthy deposits for their first property.

The general advice re investing in a fund through an ISA is sound. If you were comfortable taking more risk and wanted shares directly then you can hold them through an ISA wrapper, e.g. HL or AJB.

If you go down this route I’d still go with some diversification. Buy 4 or 5 stocks, half US and half UK. Don’t put them all in tech- just one, then some financial services, retail, and industrial. If you want a stock that is essentially a fund then buy Berkshire Hathaway (B stock) as that is well diversified across the US economy and will probably cash out if the company is broken up after Buffet eventually dies…