Hi, Read your tips on moneyam.com, new at this game, have about 2k to play with never actually brought stock and shares.

How can i find things like penny shares and how do you do the research on a particulare share.

Who to use to buy and sell the shares and what their rates are like.

I hope you don't mind me approaching you like this.

Would prefer to buy shares that are termed as pennies shares (below 1).

Also is a minumum buy and a maxium buy of the Shares ?

Any tips - Help !!!!!!!!!

Thank in advance.

Guys thanks for the advise, Here i come.

Think i might get some shares in NEWMEDIA SPARK, there was a good article about them in shares. Went to LSexhange site :

Had a look at the trends looks good and now I hear they have 51 million in the bank.

What do you think guys good move ????

Also is a simple formula at hand to work out what you have to do to break even

And do you put the stamp duty when you sell and when you buy ?

Stamp duty is only on buys not sells.

Break even is (purchase price + stamp duty + commission)/ (current bid + commission)

Divide the above by the number of shares to get breakeven per share.

Thats make so much sense now, thanks guys...

Syed_22

What do you guys think about me buying my first shares in Newmedia spark ????

Have you registered to play the game at www.comdirect.co.uk?

They give you a virtual 100,000 to play with over a month. Also you then have access to research on the shares you buy.

I often try out shares on the game, to watch what they are doing. This month one of the shares I'm playing with in Newmedia spark and I am currently showing a loss!

(I think one of the directors sold some shares on the 13th, the day after they announced there results.)

Suggest you get a copy of the annual report.

Also New Media Spark tipped in Shares magazine - there will be a lot of folks buying on the strength of that - then wanting to get out just as you get in. Wait, play the game virtually. The market will ALWAYS be there - will you?

Sorry - but this is the voice of bitter experience talking. Once you can identify a stock easily and you have more winners than losers, use real money. Even now, after doing this for years, my finger sometimes hovers on the buy button and I get cold feet.

The main thing is plan plan plan.

I can recommend Sharescope end of day program to quickly flick through & find out which stocks are on a rising trend very easily. After initial purchase it costs 11.95 a month. Most non daytraders use it.

Hi guys I want to find the price of shares for a unit Trust (Norwich Union Property), where do i get the info on that pls.

I was told by one of our ecomomist that this looks like a promising share, I just want to do the research muself.

I went to the LSexchange.com and typed the details - could not find it there .

Any suggestions

Syed

The Finanacial times have a price listing i think...

Thanks for that will look into that


Syed

ABOUT THE NORWICH PROPERTY FUND

Best Fund in Property Sector over 5 years

Key Points
- Large & broad based fund.
- Highly resourced property team.
- Useful for portfolio diversification.

Fund Facts
Sector: Property
Structure: UNIT TRUST
Launched: September, 1991
Size: 623.08m.
Yield (net) : 2.6%
Dividends paid: 31/1, 31/7.

This fund benefits from a large and dedicated property team, and at over 500m in size is always likely to have exposure to all the main sectors. Therefore due to the low correlation of property to equities the trust is useful for portfolio planning purposes.

Investment Selection: The objective is to achieve optimum returns via income and capital appreciation through investment in certain kinds of commercial property, property-related assets, government and other public securities and units in collective vehicles.
Direct property purchases are preferred and a strong credit rating for tenants is a primary aim for the management team so as to limit tenant default risk. Property-related assets (shares) will normally account for 20% of the portfolio.
Valuations are undertaken monthly by an independent third-party.
Portfolio Details : The portfolio is generally invested in the following areas: Offices, Industrial, Shops, Retail warehousing, Property shares and Cash. No more than 5% of the fund in any individual holding and no tenant can account for more than 20% of the income of the fund. Bets against the IPD Property index are regularly monitored.
How actively is this fund managed ? There are some limits placed on the portfolio but these could result in significant divergences from the benchmark from time to time.
How risky is this fund? Over the last 3 years the annualised volatility of returns has averaged 3.9%. By way of comparison, this is 0.9 times as much as the benchmark index and 0.2 times as much as the FTSE All Share Index.

ABOUT THE MANAGER: Gerardine Davies (since July 2001)
A Chartered Surveyor and holds a Diploma in Property Investment, she joined Morley Fund management in July 2001. Previously she worked at Hermes where she was responsible for overseeing the acquisition by Hermes and GE Capital of MEPC, a 4 billion quoted property company. Before working for Hermes she worked for NPI between 1989-96 and was put in charge of the unit linked pension and life property funds in 1993. Before NPI she worked for the British Gas Pension fund which she joined in 1985 where she was a senior property executive.

Fund holdings:
3.2% British Land (property share)
2.8% Farnborough (office)
2.8% Guildford (industrial)
2.6% Maidstone (industrial)
2.3% Maidstone (retail warehouse)
2.3% London (office)
2.2% Land Securities (property share)
2.2% Edinburgh (office)
1.9% Glasgow (office)
1.9% London (in town retail)

Sector Split:
30.5% Offices
27.8% Industrial
22.6% Retail Warehousing
14.2% Shops
4.9% Other

For anyone thats interested I am trading with www.nothing-ventured.com. It's a stupid name I admit and probably makes it sound like a naff trading site, but in fact it is a seriously good share dealing site.
Features are:
1. Flat 9.95 fee on all trades.
2. 'Streaming' facility thats lets you see real time prices as they change - right there and then!! (brilliant - like being a real stockbroker)
3. Trade Analysis - allows you to see all the transactions of other people going through on that stock so you can see the buying trend.
4. News Hub - a great news collection point that gathers up all the LSE news from various sources as it is released.

My tip for buying shares is buy on good news - sell on bad. Don't buy on tips, just use those as reinforcement for your own decisions. Keep in touch with news and tips on the shares you own eg. newspaper tips, broker tips. Opinions alone can make or break share value. I usually buy on good trading results or new contract news as these things will almost always will make the share value rise.
Oh, and one other thing - don't be the first man in or the last man out. Let other people make the first move!

A bit plagerised but makes sense:

*********************************

Sell on the rumour, buy on the fact
The reverse Sell on the rumour, buy on the fact works just as well, except it is used where bad news rather than good is expected. That is often why a company can come out with absolutely terrible results, yet the share price rises on the day.
Almost always, the nimblest of the professional investors have been selling for weeks (or going short, which is the process of selling something you dont own in order to buy it back again more cheaply later) in anticipation of bad news, and then buying back in when it is incorporated into the price.
It is this process of digesting news and building it into the price which underlies the short-term movement of stock market prices. That is why brokers are always comparing prices and expected earnings for various companies, and have distilled them into a price earnings ratio (P/E) which is the standard yardstick for comparing one share to another.
Its function is just like those price per 100g comparisons we see on supermarket shelves which tell us whether the large 3 jar of coffee is in fact cheaper than the small 1.25 one.


Research

Before you buy shares in a company, you want to be sure that what you're getting is going to be a good home for your hard-earned cash. There is no better way to do that than to give it a basic financial check-up.
Here are just a few of the vital statistics that you should measure to give you some confidence in your investment:
Prospective price earnings ratios
Forecast earnings
Earnings and price history
Price earnings/growth ratio
Dividend yields
Interest cover
Management shareholdings
Pension fund deficit
What makes the company tick

The crucial thing is to note down why you are buying shares in a particular company, and what you expect it to do. Is this stock intended as a solid defensive holding which won't fall even though it may not rise much? Is it intended to produce a long-term income, or are you planning to take advantage of a temporary price weakness for a quick gain?

Price earnings ratios
P/E ratios measure how much you have to pay per share for the earnings after tax that the share generates, and the lower the figure is, the less you are taking for granted.
A P/E of 10 means that you pay ten times as much as a year's earnings per share (EPS), while a P/E of 200, as sported by Cisco Systems at the height of the technology bubble, means you pay 200 times as much.
The crucial figure, however is not the historic P/E ratio, but the prospective one, based on expectations for the next results. Investors are willing to pay higher P/E ratios for shares, the faster the earnings are increasing.

Price earnings/growth ratio
Sometimes known as the PEG, this is a simple measure of value for money to aid comparisons, like those supermarket signs which show how much the hundreds of different breakfast cereals cost per 100 grams.
Without it, we are in a little trouble. A company trading at 10 times next year's earnings is not necessarily 'cheaper' than one trading at 20 times, it all depends on the profit growth.
The PEG rule of thumb is that you should not pay a P/E higher than the percentage rate of growth in EPS. So for a firm consistently increasing profits by 20 per cent it would be fair to pay a P/E of 20, and for 10 per cent earnings growth, a P/E of 10.
Dividend yield
The dividend yield is merely the annual dividend divided by the current share price.
Reinvested dividends form the core of long-term share market returns, so you need to have clear growth objectives if you decide to buy a share that pays no dividend or merely a low one.
Interest cover
Debt has sunk many a good company, and it is important to know firstly how much any candidate firm has, but more importantly, how it can pay the interest charges.
We should steer clear if a company's operating profits do not cover expected interest charges at least four times. Debt is obviously a greater worry when profits are contracting.
Likewise, finding out how much debt is fixed rate and how much floating will be important depending on whether rates are generally rising or falling.

Management shareholdings
Putting your money where your mouth is the crux of this point. If directors are actively buying shares in their own company, that is undeniably a positive sign (though they may still be wrong).
Sales of shares by directors are harder to read, because diversification of holdings is very much an issue even in successful firms, and there are only a few windows during the year when such sales can take place.
Nevertheless, consistent selling does hit share prices and we should be aware of it. Any website with a regulatory news feed will show changes in stakes by directors. The site www.directorsdeals.co.uk offers a comprehensive subscription service.

What makes a company tick
Perhaps this should be first, not last. You need to understand how a company makes money, and what are the factors that will affect its trading performance.
While that doesn't mean poring over biotechnology or microchip trade journals, you should have a feeling for the business model. The closer you are to understanding the reasons why a particular firm's products and services are bought, the more likely you are to get a feeling for when it is going wrong.

I use Halifax share dealing, no monthly fees a flat commission rate, I would advise using a system your most comfortable with - sounds obvious but not every site has the same needs for everyone

To Billytrip,

Thank you for the time you've taken to explain sharedealing in more depth.
You obviously know much more than me so I have copied and pasted your script onto a word doc. so I can go through it later - slowly....

Out of interest - how long do you spend researching a company before you invest and what % of decisions you make turn out to be right. When I say right I mean investments which either made you money or broke even (I consider break even a sucess in an enviroment where you can easily lose money). In fact my motto is first try not to lose money - second try to earn money!

I have a list of around 40 companies that I compile from news items, the FT and just personal exposure to them, I add and take off companies depending on there movements (i.e if it has been dropping for months with no positive news then it gets "relegated" from my list etc. Split between all industries.

Researching - well I am fortunate enough to work as a marketing specialist so part of my full time job involves researching companies so I use some of this knowledge for sharedealing, If I didnt work where I do then the amount of research would depend on:

* The amount invested (for 1k I would not do as much as say 5k)
* The Company and its share price
* Analyst ratings/Targets etc

Hypothetically speaking if you could afford to buy the whole company outright, would you? becasue if you wouldnt spend x Million on the whole company then dont spend your x Thousands on shares.

What % has turned out right? - without cursing myself over 9 Trades since October last year when I started, I have 100% record with an average 27% return. - Mainly due to a spreadsheet I created tracking prices and targets etc and BUY and SELL guides + other infomation.

I have 3 rules

* Never buy on someone elses advise, unless you research yourself
* Always set a BUY and SELL price and always stick to it
* Never panic BUY or Sell, just ride out any fluctuations in price

Good advice.
I wonder if you have Celltech (CCH) on your list. I have some shares in this company because I thought their prospects were beginning to improve. However after their results posting yesterday the city would appear not to agree with that!
What are your views - if any on this company. I would really appreciate your opinion. (Down 4.5% yesterday, down 1.5% today)

Yours nervously.....

* Always set a BUY and SELL price and always stick to it

If you invest in a company and accept that its share price is in part a reflection of the fundamentals of that company, the fundamentals of that company may change while you are holding its shares. This could happen, for example, if the company posts better than expected results or benefits from substantial new business where the value of that contract or business is known, and therefore it's effect on future results and the value of the business as an ongoing concern can be calculated.

In these circumstances you still may wish to stick to your pre-set exit price and then go looking for a new opportunity, but there can be value in staying with what you are in, because X% growth in your current investment is worth more than X% in another stock, due to trading costs and spread.

It's worth re-assessing your holdings on a regular basis. Asking yourself the question "would I buy it today?" can be helpful.

* Never panic BUY or Sell, just ride out any fluctuations in price

Although... if everyone seems to be panic selling, and you can't work out why, be extremely wary. What do they know that you don't? :-)

Your are right of course, but each to his/her own methods

I set the sell price becasue if I keep holding on to a rising share and get too greedy and it suddenly falls it would be annoying to say the least, but of course you do need a degree of flexibility as things change in the share market everyday. Buy price I just set as I have missed out on low stocks before as I kept expecting it to keep going down and it didnt.

The panic buy/sell, well I made the mistake of doing it once with GWP and the price dropped 15-20% the next day - fortunatly it went up eventually to a profit but you have to learn from your initial mistakes.

To Guysands - I do have Celltech on my list, up until february this year they were tipped buy four Analysts as BUY - ING Financial, Lehmann, SG Cowan and UBS Warburg, so some pretty big hitters there - Have now heard that their target price has been slashed to 300p by Panmure!

This may sound silly - apologies - but I have 2 ask: Day trading/Spreads vs. swing vs. "going long" (mmm ... traders sound like a kinky bunch 2 me) - my question - when people talk about loosing their "shirts" and closing a "loosing" trade asap, I assume it's about ANY trade, be it 1 min after buy, 2 days or even 2 years after purchase - if things go "south"? What confuses me is the following - if I'm DAY TRADING (sweaty palms & all) and things go south, am I obliged to take action THAT day, as a day trader, or can I B-com a SWINGER for awhile on that stock, hoping for a recovery that my research may indicate.

If U trade daily - semantically, U're a DAY TRADER - if U let it lie awhile - U're a swinger & if U let it lie a few months, well, U're either a "trade-wimp" or U've got a life (with loads of dosh) - I'm not sure - (I'm both wimp and lifeless, bankrupt and a newbie to top!!)

I just don't understand - apart from spreadbetting, or the company goes into liquidation, etc. etc, (mmm, all those etc's.) how U can loose everything - unless of course, DAY TRADING forces you to close your position by 16h30 - daily. Does it?

OK, OK, I can hear the roar of laughter - I just don't get it. If it's not favourable to sell, well, the glass if half full, it will recover, even if it takes 10 years. Let the stock lie and move on to new ground - am I being naive?

To make money (& release cash) you have to buy & sell. If your shares are going down, you cash in taking the loss, and then try and make back the loss on new purchases. The problem comes when you continue making losses, and the pot get smaller and smaller......until it just disappears.

A friend, was left a portfolio by her mother a few years ago. Over the last 3 years as the shares dropped in price, the broker keep selling and buying to try and recover the losses, but now there is nothing left. The portfolio used to produce a reasonable income, but the money moved from high yielding shares to high risk shares. (I think panic set in, and he decided to go high risk in the desperate hope the market recovered - but instead the many of the companies just went bust or got wiped out!)

I have quite a bit of money tied up in loss making shares. The ones paying dividends, I'm ignoring as they should one day recover. So far I've been short of cash to invest, twice twice this year, as I've seen a share drop to a price I believe I can make a quick profit so I have taken a loss from a share that I don't get any dividends to provide cash flow.