How to start trading shares

[DealorNoDeal]

I think the chances of buying and selling shares over short periods is not likely to be profitable.

Unless you're glued to a screen day trading, it's not likely to be a retirement hobby which fills much of your time either.

[d000hg]

If you can't do the research in to what platforms to use how are you going to do the research in to which shares to buy

Starting from zero is not always easy. It's a hugely crowded market and finding even who to trust to tell you who is good is not so simple.

I used to follow the Motley Fool which is still around but I'm not sure if it's the same thing, I've forgotten all the other sites/magazines I used to read 20 years back.

[d000hg]

Unless you're glued to a screen day trading, it's not likely to be a retirement hobby which fills much of your time either.

I dunno, if you equate it to an interest in horse racing or football you can go to incredible depth - reading up on what companies are doing, following their financials and key personnel. Just reading the FT can kill an hour a day (I assume). I follow a couple of chaps on YT to keep current on crypto and that's 30-60min every day (more maybe) if I can be bothered to watch it.

[_V_]

Unless you're glued to a screen day trading, it's not likely to be a retirement hobby which fills much of your time either.

Retirement, swap staring at a screen all day, to spend all day starting at a trading terminal, unpaid.

[Fraidycat]

Dont trade in and out.

It is a bull market. Buy the dips and hold till you think the bull market has ended.

FTSE 100 and many large caps UK stocks are dogs. FTSE 250 has done much better in this bull market from 2009. Or buy US tech stocks (like AMD ) .

The market is overbought and due for a crash but will continue higher and higher while the Fed and centrals banks continue to print money. When they stop printing or raise rates look out below.

[Fraidycat]

Retirement, swap staring at a screen all day, to spend all day starting at a trading terminal, unpaid.

It is worse than unpaid. You pay the market and other traders for the privilege with your day trading losses.

[Andy2]

Day trading is a mug's game, just don't do it

[_V_]

I am retiring at the end of the month, and looking for things to do to fill my time. Got a few ideas.

One such idea was to have a go at share trading. I would just deal with small amounts, seeing it more as a hobby than trying to achieve an income.

Does anyone have any advice about how best to start out? Are there apps that let you set up a virtual account so you can practise trading with real share data?

Cheers
Moose

If you really want to go down this road, starting with a demo shares trading account, here are some choices.

https://www.ig.com/uk/shares
https://www.etoro.com/trading/demo-account/

However, most demo/practice accounts expire after 30 or 60 days. The temptation then is to bung £5K real money, then when that's gone, £50K, then £500K...you get the drift.

[GregRickshaw]

I am retiring at the end of the month, and looking for things to do to fill my time. Got a few ideas.

One such idea was to have a go at share trading. I would just deal with small amounts, seeing it more as a hobby than trying to achieve an income.

Does anyone have any advice about how best to start out? Are there apps that let you set up a virtual account so you can practise trading with real share data?

Cheers
Moose

Sports trading on Betfair is a good option and certainly Match Betting.

[northernladuk]

If you want to mess with minute trading try the binance app and trade small amounts of crypto. The upswings can be a good number of percent as can the downswings but the trend is up at the moment. See if you can spot a very short term trend for example, from the bottom the next time it dropped was after a 3% gain etc. Watch the graphs second by second and trade. It's pretty good fun to be fair. Used to do it on a long train commute and would often be up by some god tens of pounds. Problem is you can't cash out so the minute you take your eye off the phone you are the mercy of whatever crypto you had to leave it in. More often than not lost what I made overnight with no chance to stop it.

Was pretty good fun though.