Minimum to invest in stock market?

[nc1080]

I know theoretically I can invest £1 with an online broker if a share is for sale at £1 (although online brokerage fees are around £14 so....)

But I don't want an online broker, I want to speak to a traditional stockbroking firm, give them my money and they chose the stocks and manage my money.

Will they turn me away if I come to them with £5k? What about 10k?

I would say £5k would be a reasonable starting amount. But remember to spread your investments. The rule I was given was don't invest more than 1% of your portfolio in any company

If you don't want to manage the stocks yourself, would you consider a tracking fund? Which you should be able to access either through an online platform, or through a more traditional broker (I think - I only have experience of investing through a platform). Then its diversified for you, and you could do it with a lot less than 5K if you wanted.
www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/investing/article-1583915/A-guide-cheapest-index-tracker-funds.html

Thanks so much for your replies! I'm scared of online trading platforms but only because I have no idea what I'm doing.

I know investments can go bad. DH lost over £1mil, all of our savings and proceeds of our house, and proceeds of his inheritance investing in failed start-ups. We've sold our cars and I'm currently pregnant and prettified of being broke. We're currently not talking.

I've just got a new job (yes even though I'm pregnant!) as I've had no choice but to go back to work. Job pays £50k a year and am thinking I squirrel away half my monthly pay packet which is around £1500.

Does that sound reasonable?

What was the reason he lost all that money?? Investments do go bad but there's things you can do to minimise losses.
Be very careful OP. Learn from his mistakes. Did he not spread his investments? Did he try to hang on to bad investments in the hope the value would go back up.
Before you invest anything you must do your due diligence, particularly after what you've been through. Study online. Look on YouTube. Get knowledge.
A lot of online trading platforms will let you have demo accounts so you can practice without real money. I think it's very important you understand what you're doing so that such a catastrophic mistake doesn't happen again.

Your priority should be to build up some cash savings first to use as an emergency fund - ideally enough to cover 3-6 months of household expenses. Then look at investing after that.

Wait until you have a cushion before you think about investing. As your dh has shown you don't always make money

My dh has around 5k that is his to play with and sometimes he does well and others badly. And he works in the industry!

You say start ups, plural? I'd be furious to be honest. Never invest what you can't afford to lose.

Investing in start-ups is very very risky - it's high-risk, high-reward, you either make a mint or lose everything.

Investing in FTSE companies is a lot duller in all but the most extreme circumstances, you might gain or lose a few percent, but that's generally about it.

The problem with using a standard stockbroker such as you describe is the management fees they charge. They'll often take a percentage of your money each year whether they increase or decrease its value, and a bigger chunk if they make a gain. When you're only going in with a relatively small investment you've not got much scope to negotiate these fees. I'd echo looking at tracker funds.

Thought it worth pointing out that if you want to protect your future assets it would be worth investing some of that money into a pension. You'll benefit from the tax relief and if your husband has been irresponsible with your property/other assets then you will need it! You'll have a pension through your employer, and if that isn't a final salary arrangement, make sure you make the most of matching employer contributions and salary sacrifice. (Sorry if you're already doing this - a lot of people forget how tax efficient and vital pensions are!)

Thanks again everyone.

He cocked up badly. He bought an investee company of his in the hopes to raise money off the back of it and take the product to market. Turns out the technology has been superseded and is now fucking useless. That was about £300k cash. We have unpaid debts to us about £80k which we're chasing through lawyers to recoup, and the rest was 2 or 3 start-ups/investee companies that he personally invested in. He's lost his clients loads of cash too.

I've lost a lot of respect for him as he never consulted me on buying the investee company and after making promises for the last 2 years that the start-ups are about to come good, they're trudging along just breaking-even but no prospect of a profitable exist in the foreseeable future.

We have no safety net, and he's on the hunt for a job again too. He can easily get a job paying £120-150k base but with two children (from his first marriage) in private school, there's not much left over for rent (in London), bills, life. But meanwhile our credit cards have been maxed out and we have little cash to get by as we overstretched ourselves on our current rental property because he was always saying the big money was just around the corner.

I don't want to ever be in this situation ever again and want to build up my own nest for my unborn child and I.

Sorry to hear about your predicament OP.

If i where you I would start by deleveraging yourself - paying down your credit cards and any other borrowing before looking to invest - the amount you are charged on borrowing will far outweigh all but the best of returns from stocks and shares.

So sorry to hear that op.

Pay off your loans first and build up a safety net before investing.
Investing in tracker funds through reputable platforms like I mentioned upthread is good for long term investing, rather than short term (as I understand it). In your shoes, I would use it for child trust funds and saving for retirement. Long term, the risks of investing this way are reduced (your investment will follow the stock market overall, which may go down one year, but over 20 years will go up if that makes sense). You can do it through an ISA too. You don't want to lock away money you may need though - a small amount each month is the best way to go, but pay off your debts and build up a cushion of easily accessed money first.

£1,500 a month is loads - if I was in your position (once I'd built up a savings cushion) I would invest some of that in a LISA, some in a JISA for your dc, but make sure that some of it was going into short term savings/getting back on the property ladder. Don't forget to take advantage of a company pension scheme if offered.
This site has lots of good advice relevant to your situation, if you haven't been on there already:
www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/

www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/which-saving-account

www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/pay-off-debts
"Those with debts AND savings are seriously overspending but the solution is simple. Pay the debts off before you save and maybe even your mortgage. Forget the old ‘must have an emergency savings fund' logic as getting rid of debts beats that too.

This guide explains how to pay off debts rather than save and the logic behind it."

Btw, we only pay £50 a month into a stocks and shares JISA for dd (all we can afford at the moment) so it is possible to make the most out of the savings options available without investing huge sums. This might not seem like much at all, but it will stack up and will hopefully help dd out a bit when she goes to uni, or go towards a deposit on a house when she is older. Or she might blow it all on shoes, but I'm hoping not

I don't know if other firms do this but on Hargreaves Lansdown you can have a shadow account where you can track how certain shares are doing before you decide to invest in them. Maybe set up an account and do that while you think about what you want to invest in?