Stock Market for Beginners

"Investors Chronicle"
Beginners Guide to Investment

Bernard Gray

Buy New £10.49

Are you baffled by the stock markets and investing? Would you like to learn how to take control of your financial future? Then you should definitely start by reading this investment bible.

This book is invaluable to both new investors and those with some experience. It explains investment in easy to understand terms. It is split into three sections. The first section explains the markets, including the stock market, the guilt market and the futures markets.

Section 2 explains how to invest and covers topics including financial planning, shares and tax efficient investments. The final section talks about companies and covers subjects such as valuing shares, new issues, takeovers and the explains what actually moves share prices.



For those of you who have already read the Beginners Guide to Investment, or already know the basics, we have put together a list of indispensable tools that you will need on your journey towards becoming a serious Investor.

Magazines
Live share price services
Stockbrokers
Tip Sheets

Magazines

Two share magazines that we can safely recommend are the Investors Chronicle and Shares.

The Investors Chronicle

The Investors Chronicle is published weekly each Friday and is available in all good newsagents and bookstores or by subscription. The Investors Chronicle (I.C.) is a magazine "written for stockbrokers by stockbrokers."

Priced at £3.35 and advertised as the UKs best-selling investment magazine, it covers a wide range of investment subjects with articles on individual companies (tips), company results, the economy, sectors, options and news comment and analysis. It features various weekly topics such as "companies with rapidly growing earnings", AIM stocks and international flavours, for example, "how to invest in India".

There are also sections covering factual information such as Directors dealings, economic indicators, exchange rates, saving and bond rates, takeover bids and future flotations.

All in all an excellent, well written magazine that we have no hesitation in recommending for our essential must-haves.

The I.C. is also published in electronic format here.
For non-subscribers this is in 'locked' mode but will give you a good idea of the typical content.

Shares

Shares magazine is published weekly every Thursday and available at most newsagents and by subscription. It is advertised as "the investors champion".

Priced at £3.30 it is similar to the I.C. but written in a possibly more accessible or newsletter style. There is more journalistic comment on individual shares rather than the more rigid reporting style of the I.C.

We recommend Shares magazine either on its own or to complement the Investors Chronicle.

Special Offer!
Try 4 Issues of Shares Magazine FREE, visit our Shares Magazine Review page for more details.

Live share price services

There are many web-based share price services available. The cost of a good service providing live prices of shares, indices, commodities and foreign exchange is well within the reach of a serious investor and should be worth the extra cost compared to a free service with 15 minute delayed prices. Most, if not all packages will include charting, news items, company facts and figures, filters, custom pages and portfolio management and much more.

There may be a choice of Level 1 or Level 2 prices: Level 1 gives the current best buy/sell price (the "touch") whereas Level 2 also gives every market makers and/or SETs buy/sell price.

To access this type of system you pay an annual subscription and access the service on your PC or laptop (or PDA) via the Internet, using your logon password. It is truly portable and can be accessed by you on any PC at any location. This includes your particular set-up, custom pages etc. Obviously one subscription only covers one PC at a time!

KTS Market Terminal
UPDATE 22/05/08

KTS are shortly to discontinue thier IP based price system (End June we think) We shall be using Proquote as a replacement so if anyone wants to know what we think please let us know.

We have good working knowledge of this system and for the price it is very good value. KTS service is very reliable and will very rarely let you down. It will run on a modem but broadband is obviously going to be cheaper if you want it running all day. The best way to find out what is included is to go for the free trial at www.ktsplc.com.

Yahoo delayed share prices

We have been asked how you can keep track of your share prices cheaply and without bothering your broker!

There are two websites you can use depending on whether you want just UK, or a mixture of UK and Overseas.
There is much more useful information on both these sites which we will go into later. You may also feel like exploring the site yourself.

Firstly http://finance.yahoo.com
This is for worldwide stocks including U.S., Canada, Australia, London, and AIM
N.B. If you register with Yahoo you can set up a portfolio with all the shares you need to look up.

If you know the ticker/symbol: - type into Get Quotes then click Go If the stock is London (incl. AIM) the ticker/symbol needs to include .L
E.g. Nature Technology is NSO.L
If you don't know the symbol, leave this blank and go straight to Symbol Lookup. Type in the full name. If the stock is not US & Canada-change to World Market on the drop down menu then click Look Up.

The Pink Sheet stocks are sometimes hard to find, it is best to remember the ticker. International Power, as you know is IPWG but needs to be entered as IPWG.PK

Secondly, http://uk.finance.yahoo.com

This is just UK shares (incl. AIM)
Either type in the symbol i.e. NSO then hit Go or follow the instructions for a Symbol Lookup, as above.

Stockbrokers

We are not yet in a position to recommend specific stockbrokers but would make the following suggestions:

Firstly you need a broker that suits your needs. If you have a portfolio of £1m you will possibly need a major broker who specializes in managing larger portfolios over the medium to longer term, perhaps with investment discretion. On the other hand if you want to speculate with a few thousand pounds you would probably get on better with a smaller broker, who's expertise is in short term trading strategies. But, bear in mind, there are various types of personnel in every stockbrokers office. Somehow you need to find a broker (as in the person rather than the firm) with whom you can relate.

You could try contacting APCIMs, the Association of Private Client and Investment Managers or the Securities Institute for a list of suitable brokers. We would strongly suggest arranging an informal meeting with your potential adviser face-to-face, and go from there.

Again we would like comments or recommendations from anyone currently using a broker. Or if any stockbrokers would like to offer there services we would love to hear from you.

Tip sheets

Unfortunately some tip sheets have a bit of a spivvy reputation, for example the Red Hot Penny Share Guide. We have nothing against this publication, not having read a copy for ages, but the name!

We are, however, going to suggest three tip sheets, or newsletters which we think you will appreciate.

Techinvest

This is a subscription based tip sheet, the annual cost being £199 in the UK. It specializes in smaller technology shares for which it is very well respected in the investment community, professional and amateur alike. Shares that are tipped are always revisited and the advice regularly updated, which is most important. Strongly recommended for anyone interested or investing in technology stocks.

The Small Company Sharewatch

No we didnt get our name from this newsletter! But it is an old favourite of ours. Very well written, companies mentioned are well researched and therefore well known by the editor. Again tips are closely followed and advice regularly updated. Has a personal feel about it, continuous advice to buy, keep holding, sell half or sell indicates the writer enjoys his business. Endorsed by Jim Slater. Strongly recommended by us!

City Confidential

Last, but certainly not least, City Confidential, whose Market Comment is published on our website each monthly A good cross section of companies are tipped each month covering large and small cap stocks. Written by the technically proficient and well-respected Simon Flather, City Confidential completes an excellent trio of tip sheets.

Again if any subscribers to other tip sheets would like us to publish reviews or comments, or indeed if there are any publishers out there who feel aggrieved that we have not included their product...

Or perhaps you feel you could do better, you are welcome to submit share tips for publication.

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