Hi folks,

Been watching and reading you all for a while now and thourghly entertaining it is but are you trading real money ? Not meaning to be totally thick but there are games out there such as champion investor etc that makes it possible to trade and not risk. lso how do you set up acounts with stockbrokers and what are your personal favourites.

TIA.

Chimpchoker

Chimpchoker, are you crazy? Well yes I suppose you must be if you read these boards, so you are well qualified for sharedealing! Most of us are trading real money, some of us THINK we are trading real money, others have just been let out on day release. Most importantly ALL of us lose real money, but if we are lucky we also make some as well; I cannot stress too much that, whilst there is some very useful information given out over these boards a high percentage is guesswork/ramping/deramping so do not take what you read as being anywhere near the truth without doing your own research (I may be "teaching my grandmother to suck eggs" here, if so I apologize).

This is a small list of online brokers, with varying fees which you will see when you look them up; the cheapest is not necessarily the best. I use NatWest for most of my deals, idealing and Shareview to a lesser extent, all have been faultless for me, NatWest is not the cheapest but their online charges are 15 min commission, max25. You are probably aware that you will pay 0.5% stamp duty on every purchase but not on sales.

Barclays
Charles Stanley
DLJ Direct
E Trade
Halifax
Hargreaves Lansdown
idealing
IMIWeb
Merryll Lynch HSBC
Nat West
Redmayne Bentley
Schwab
Selftrade
Shareview (part of Lloyds TSB)
StockTrade
TD waterhouse

This is by no means an endless list; other posters may wish to add more. Their websites will give instructions on how to set up an account. It would be nice to know how you get on.

Good luck with your quest to become a sharedealing millionaire (You might already be of course) I am still 'questing'!!
kim

kim

wrt stamp duty....a very tradeable share for instance is partygaming....no stamp duty, so if you can beat the spresd plus expenses you win

to help to that end snatch the free L2 offer while it still has a long way to run

i use TD Waterhouse......got an instant 10k trading limit ( for some reason a few years back it was 85000.
whatever you do, DO NOT T TRADE unless you can/are willing to pay for your position


that is the third easiest way to losing money.


in at number two is buying a new car



streets ahead at number one is getting married

ps

a lot of analogies to school on these bbs. one well worth remembering is DONT BE AFRAID TO ASK......cos if YOU are in the dark theres a good chance you are surrounded by other mushrooms

Good points Superrod! :0) Yes, take advantage of the free until end of March Level 2, it is excellent.
kim

Thanks for the input. I'm "playing" on the champion investor competition at the momment and I was doing ok, up about 10% then bought BFC big only to lose about 30k in a few days, lol. However this came about because I was unable to check the computer for about 3 days so a salutory lessons indeed that for serious players I think you need to treat it as a job or leave it to others who do it for a job etc.

Still what i'm doing is still only a game and that's where the difference is and i'm acutly aware of this. When I started to look at share ealing I came across options and it seemed so easy until people kept telling me that the risk level on a scale of 1 to 10 is 11! I also like the idea of day trading......oh well .....

I will do a lot of research read a lot of posts and then take a calculated risk / gamble.

Thanks for the input.

Chimp choker ( He comes from Hartlepool you know)

chimp, you could try spread betting. capital spreads will let you open a dummy account with 10k monopoly money. no risk and it's a good way of trying different strategies and learning about stops/ limit orders. (you can also re-register when you have lost the 10k and try again.) finspreads used to let you open an account where you could trade a penny/point for 8 weeks although i don't know if they still do this.

Hi Chimp Choker

I am a frequent dealer and chose to use HSBC's internet dealing. As a high activity dealer (not quite daily, but almost) I pay as little as 6.95 per trade so it's worth shopping around. I must confess that I tend to follow the recommendations on the bulletin board all of which need to be carefully considered but even where I am down I am prepared to wait and hopefully see a recovery in the long term. I spread the risk as far as possible with a diverse range of predominantly AIM listed securities. All risky but not always subject to the large falls and rises which we have seen in recent days
After a while you'll get to know the rampers and derampers quite well and those who you feel are flogging a dead horse! (refer to EIRX - Potatohead) Good Luck.

Mr Turbot
ph will get it right one day then we will be rich.

Chimp Choker
You can always visit Drivers Tips nothing to do with me, you have been warned.

http://www.moneyam.com/InvestorsRoom/posts.php?tid=9585#lastread