Investment Forum - My Experience

I am 26 years old and started to trade in the summer of 2009. Realising the fact that my savings were being depreciated year upon year, I decided to invest in the stock market in order to turnover my money. This is my trading experience to date.

Just three days after deciding to invest in the stock market, I was holding shares in a few companies. This was my first mistake, rushing into the stock market and trying to make money quickly. Looking back, I should I have spent considerable time reading around the stock markets and grasping the basics of shares and the factors which influence them. I would also recommend anyone contemplating share trading to set up a ‘dummy’ share dealing account, where potential investors can try share dealing without actually losing any money. If I had done this, I would have saved a lot of money.

Within the first few months, my portfolio was down and I was selling shares at losses.  One of the principal lessons I have learnt is that it is very easy to lose money on the stock market without research. Making money in the stock market is not easy and without research, I would say it is incredibly difficult.  During the first months of my trading, I spent no time on research and chased many stocks from the ‘top risers’ list and from tips from the bulletin boards hoping for quick gains. I am still paying for some of these mistakes, as I am ‘locked’ into many shares. Some of these ‘quick gains’ are currently down 30% in my portfolio.  I have learnt not to trust everyone on the bulletin boards and learnt that everything posted on these boards are not entirely true.

Watching my portfolio depreciate day by day was very difficult for me.  I was always trying to recover my losses and taking wild punts into the ‘Risky / High reward’ category.  Some of my other mistakes included, buying a share on a RNS not realising the well known phrase ‘buy on speculation, sell on news’
Emotions can play a key part in buying and selling. I still have to master this aspect of trading. Controlling these emotions and to ensure they don’t cloud your judgement in buying or selling is a key aspect of trading.

I am learning the hard way, but in some strange way glad to have made the mistakes this early in my journey. Thankfully for me, I have met some great people via the bulletin boards who have helped me a great deal. I have been given support, advice and guidance which have helped me increase my knowledge in share trading. I have witnessed some shocking behaviour on bulletin boards with people attempting to drive prices up or down with lies and false information.

For the past few months, I have been in the process of restructuring my portfolio by reducing, or at times replacing some of my losers with companies where I see future growth future potential.  It will be one year this summer 2010 when I started my journey, and I am confident I will be able to turn my portfolio around. I believe in learning from my mistakes and acquiring more knowledge will enable me to become a successful investor.

I have recently discovered www.share-exchange.com which contains research resources and some very useful links and information on share trading. The articles appear to be written by very experienced share dealers and private investors and have been of great use to me.

Good post, I can tell you are learning! Good luck for 2010!
I agree with all of your post, except maybe the dummy share trading account. I can never see the point of that, but there we go!
I agree knowledge is the key and that means lots and lots of reading. But always read between the lines and try to form your own opinion. Another tip that sticks in my mind is Buy for a reason and Sell once that reason becomes redundant.
Why am I buying these shares? Because I read it in the paper. Is that good enough? I am buying these shares because I believe such and such should happen and that will increase profits etc. Or such and such didn't happen because I didn't expect something else to effect it so much.
It would be good to hear your progress.

Thank you pinto1uk I just checked out the site you mention in your post and joined up.

Lot's of good info on it.

I found your post very interesting, admitting mistakes and learning from them is the key I think, good luck to you and fellow newbies.

Thanks for the post: not sure we appreciate links to other sites! I have just registered so will check it out. We keep trying to give our readers/visitors useful info. so I suppose the answer is 'must try harder'

Just had a look at the aforementioned site: "Humm"

In broker's jargon I suspect you would call this a 'plant'!!

Very interesting story Pinto. I have been trading shares since January 09, and found it a big challenge. Having had many years business experience I thought I knew a fair bit about what made comapnies tick. Early buys were banks shares just after they had suffered the major crash.  Those were no brainers at the time, they would either go under or recover.  I thought that there was no way the government would allow them to go under, of course that was correct.  After the initial success with those I began to broaden my pf, trying to find shares in other sectors to spread the risk, and so I started to read the opinions of others on various share dealing boards.  Whilst some were successful it was clear that they were unreliable since many posters had another agenda. Genuine research was much harder, and I admit I havent got the attention span to go through too much of it.  I am surprised by the comment about the other site mentioned, I can see that they are strong on research though a bit short of companies researched at the moment, I do like the style though, it does all the work for an investor.  I think this site and them complement each other very well.  This year is going to be a lot harder to make money from shares I think, we will all have to be on our toes and work well together, exchanging sound advice.  I do find it great fun though, much better than leaving my savings in some non performing savings account.

If you want a site with a lot of research notes on it, try this. http://www.stockopedia.co.uk/
Not sure how they get away with it: if some of their material is not '....an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity' I don't know what is!

I think both the sites mentioned have a lot of merit as does this one but it's always wise to check and double check anything you see on the internet, don't expect a free ride but as far as good informative info goes as long as it all stands up to scrutiny and due diligence it's a huge help to newbies !!!!