New to Stocks and Shares ISA- Profit Query

[Dobbysocks]

I’m new to stocks and shares ISAs this year. Having used my cash isa to save for most of my adult life over the last 15 years.

I’ve kept an emergency fund in the cash isa and transferred the rest into a trading 212 stocks and shares. (£24k)

I have been investing £500 per month and can afford to continue doing so. But I’ve seen very little gain due to the volatility as a result of events in the Middle East.

I know all the basics of keep it in, keep investing, don’t crystallise the loss by moving when it’s down.

But my question is do you not start to ‘see’ the gains until around 5 years since investing. Or do you see some gains along the way, market dependant?

I’ve got another £37k in premium bonds and wondering whether to move these over too. (I’m currently on £1000 profit in 2026 on premium bonds vs £60 in my stocks and shares isa) But feel atm I may as well leave them where they are seeing as they’re gaining in the meantime.

Interested in this I have just started with Premium Bonds, do you win often?

I'm not an expert here, but I can share my experience.

I started investing with Trading 212 about 18 months ago and have been drip feeding money in during that period.

Like you say, this year I've seen almost no gain. But if I look back to 2025, I was up more than 20%. So overall I'm still in profit. More so than if I'd kept it in cash. (you can see your overall profit if you check the 'max' time period tab).

So you definitely don't need to wait 5 years to see gains - that's just recommended as the minimum time period in case there's a really bad year/s and the market takes a while to recover.

I have premium bonds too! They form part of my emergency fund.

I’ve been lucky so far and have won something every month. But have only had those in since January too. £50, £100, £700, £150 on my draws so far. But it is all luck and ratio. The more you have in bonds, the more chances to win.

Thanks this is really helpful. And shows what a year that was a bit less eventful compared to this one can ‘show’ in terms of the gains.

20% last year is amazing! Can I ask what you invested in? What sort of split?

Re Luck - I agree.
I've just got a small amount as I'm paying something off at present but I feel that if put a big lump sum in the rewards would be comparable to a S&SISA at this stage of my life.

The government wants us to move to the stock market but could make it easier/more understandable to do so I feel.

They should really teach this and pensions etc in school

Premium Bonds currently have an expected prize rate of around 3.3% (from April 2026 draw, down from 3.6%). It's tax-free and your capital is 100% safe, with the fun of the draw. Your £1k "profit" in 2026 sounds like good luck so far – but on average, it's not guaranteed, and many people win very little or nothing. It's more like a lottery/savings hybrid than proper growth.

A stocks & shares ISA has historically beaten that over 5+ years most of the time (average S&S ISA returns have been ~9-11% in strong recent 12-month periods, vs cash/PB equivalents). But yes, with risk of short-term losses.

I started investing in S&S about 10 years ago and am up significantly, albeit not on a huge investment. And that's despite Brexit, Covid, Ukraine, the mini Budget, the Rachel Reeves Budgets and now Iran. My advice is don't check the ISAs every day - I used to do that and became disheartened after a few months. Check them once every four months or so, you'll notice you're making a healthy profit.

Trading 212 is a platform. So what are you investing in? If, for example, you are investing in a FTSE 100 tracker, you will see gains if the FTSE level is above where you have invested. Because you are investing over time (a great thing to do) then your profit will be the current level less the weighted average of your purchases. You can look at the FTSE at any time to see what level it is at.

When people say ‘you should invest over a 5 year term’ that is to reduce the risk that on any given day your investment is worth less than you bought it for. You can see that by looking at a FTSE chart, picking any given day, and looking 5 years ahead and seeing the chance of a gain or a loss.

Market dips usually last less than 3 years. So if you buy now and it crashes tomorrow, chances are if you hold for 5 years the dip will have recovered. That is where the ‘5 years’ comes from - it is all about risk and expected outcomes.

Find a graph of stock market performance over the past 10 years. Pick a random point on the graph. Imagine this is the point you started your investment, and look at whether the graph goes up or down over the next 6 months, 1 year, 2 years etc. Every time it is higher than your starting point, you've made a profit.

Do this with different random starting points. It doesn't stay flat for 5 years then suddenly increase. It goes up and down randomly. Usually, over time, more up than down.

A stocks and shares ISA is a tax wrapper, not a specific fund or product.

I presume you are currently holding your stocks and shares with trading 212 platform in a general investment account (GIA), rather than an ISA account since it sounds like you have used your ISA allowance for cash ISAs.

If you have any of the 20,000 ISA allowance left for the current tax year, I would suggest you open a S&S ISA account with trading 212 and put your new stocks and shares investments in that ISA. An ISA is a tax shelter which means you do not have to pay tax on capital gains when you sell or dividend income on S&S within that ISA.

I am not familiar with trading 212 but I assume that everything you buy within the trading 212 GIA account you can also buy within the ISA account. In other words, you can choose to buy exactly the same funds or products within either account. But do check.

If you are not going to use up the entire 20,000 ISA allowance for this tax year, look into 'Bed & ISA'-ing any S&S currently sitting in the GIA by transferring that into the ISA. I believe you will have to sell first (which will realise any capital gains that are taxable if your profits exceed the £3,000 annual exemption as of 2025/26) but it is more tax efficient for S&S to grow within an ISA than GIA if you are going to hold them longer term.

My reading is that the OP transferred most of the cash ISA to a stocks and shares ISA. Not withdrew it and opened a GIA.

I think this is where I’m going wrong. I’ve been checking daily. Mostly to kind of see how things are impacted by the day to day as I’m so new to it. But I never usually check any other savings account like this. So I probably should heed the less frequent checking advice.

Absolutely agree on the PB. I could win nothing for the rest of the year or could continue to be lucky. For now I may keep them in this year in a hope to win big while getting to grips with stocks and share before moving more over!

I’m actually a secondary teacher and totally agree on this. I’d actually love to teach a proper ‘life skills’ class. Pensions, utilities, investments, bills etc. Now we just need the government to reform the curriculum to allow it!

A mix of ETFs. FTSE 100, S&P500, FTSE developed word and FTSE emerging markets.

Thanks, I’m aware of the wrappers. Both my cash and stocks and shares are in separate ISAs, not a GIA, as I transferred from money paid into cash ISAs in previous tax years, rather than bulk depositing.

Your selection of ETFs looks sensible. When did you transfer into the S&S ISA?

Was it in one lump sum and if so when? Or did you drip it in and if so, from when? If you had invested in the last 6-12 months, it would have been choppy but if in the last 5 years, you should be significantly up.

I’ve been investing for around a decade and have made good returns every year except this one and Covid. I definitely didn’t need to wait 5 years to see returns (but also agree with the check less often advice). You got unlucky I think with when you started, but history suggests your investments should still do much better in s&s than the cash option if you leave it in for a decent length of time.

I’ve dripped it in since January. So very choppy unfortunately!

I’m wondering if it’s a better strategy to wait for some lows each month for my £500 deposit or not to get too hung up on that.

Yes, that would by why.

Don't get too hung up about timing the lows. That is impossible especially with the TACO in charge. Just set up a regular contribution and keep dripping the 500 in.

Now is actually a good time to invest in equities precisely because it is choppy. If you don't keep checking your investments (difficult I know) and leave it to drip for a few years, it will hopefully start to swing up.

It is difficult to know. The world may go into oil shock but if you don't need the money, then drip feeding will help to smooth things over the medium to long term. Slow and steady wins the race.

I’ve been selling the stocks that have made profit so for instance if I’ve made £30 profit off £100 stock il sell that and invest in a stock which has lowered its value.

overtime you’re getting stocks for a cheaper price invested with money that wasn’t yours to start. Eventually you start getting good profits but yeah the markets awful this month

This is trading as opposed to investing. Most people don't have time to stalk the market and end up making wrong decisions and either losing money or leaving money on the table. As the expression goes, it is time in the market rather than timing the market. You don't want to miss out on the bull runs.

Hence most financial advice to ordinary investors is to drip into a low cost index fund and hold it ie forget about it.

Frequent trading also loses money to fees.

Definitely stop checking every day. Delete the app if you can.

The value of your investments will always go up and down. The last few months have been poor for obvious reasons but things will come up again in time. The important thing is to be happy with your allocation and then leave everything alone, rather than being tempted to fiddle.

The advice generally given to amateur investors is not to try to time things at all- it isn’t possible to do this with consistent success. I read an interesting fact the other day- that on average people’s investments do less well in the years after they retire than in the years before, because they have more time on their hands and decide to start taking a more active approach (with inevitably poor results). See also all the articles about the gap between market returns and investor returns- on average investors underperform the market because of failed attempts at timing, panic selling etc.

That’s really interesting about retirees. Interestingly enough I’ve seen lots of data on the most successful stocks and shares ISA accounts being dead people - as they’ve been put in and left to compound!

OP states that she transferred from her cash ISA to her S&S ISA.

I'm mainly just invested in the vanguard ftse all world (vwrp) and also a bit in the S+P 500 (I'm aware I probably don't need both of these but I'm still learning!)