Buying shares

[Noglassjustthebottleandastraw]

Hi, I would like to buy shares can anyone please recommend how I do this. I've never bought shares before.

Use a Stocks & Shares ISA so you get tax free growth.
Use a broker like HL.co.uk who gives access to many shares.

Personally I would not buy individual company shares, their value can fall to zero. I would buy a fund which in turn buys thousands of shares which the fund manager picks. It can be good to start with a fund that aims to track an Index, such as FTSE Global All Cap, or MSCI World.

As above. Terrible time for stocks now. Even the safe ones are dodgy!

On the other hand, when share prices are low then many investors would argue that it's a great time to buy them, as long as you can keep your money invested for the long term. If you're a beginner yo'ull need an index fund or global tracker - don't buy individual shares in particular companies.

If you need some beginners' pointers, there are some good youtube videos. Have a look at 's video for absolute beginners to investing. Not bad advice for someone who is just learning.

Not all shares are low. Some are low because of a lot of factors that are unknown. If we hit a recession they will go a lot lower. Its risky right now. They may not be low. They are no where close to covid low. Or 2008 recession low. Many are higher.

I will leave that to my fund manager, will insist on a large percentage of green investments.

If you're new to this and not investing a fortune, I'd open a S&S ISA through one of the cheaper platforms (which will be cheaper for you depends on your circs) and buy a cheap global tracker.

I’d buy a mixture of different shares in big companies in a mixture of different sectors and some tracker funds as well. I’d start of with about 8-10. My personal choice would be to divide the money between the following - Unilever (household goods), Rio Tinto (mining), S&P500 tracker, FTSE100 tracker, Vodaphone, National Grid (energy infrastructure), Japan Tobacco (combustable and non-combustable nicotine products), Tesco (supermarket - obviously!) None of these companies are likely to go bust, you’ll get average divident of about 4.8% per year. If you don’t approve of tobacco just buy shares in a different sector, but I chose tobacco as it’s a strong defensive share and pays big dividends.

when share prices are low then many investors would argue that it's a great time to buy them

I would argue there is a long way to go yet. A lot of money moved into the markets during the peak of the pandemic. I feel the market needs to correct on the whole to pre pandemic levels. However there will always be some shares that do outperform the overall market.