Reply to: How to start trading shares

[_V_]

Thanks for all of the helpful tips. I'm getting the impression that short-term trading is a mug's game. Maybe I'll take up the ukulele instead....

Cheers
Moose

"Trading" anything.

If you want something to waste what little life you have left, whilst simultaneously draining you of what little money you have left, it is pretty much the perfect pastime.

[DealorNoDeal]

Trading shares is gambling.

Yep. The term trading sounds a bit more respectable but it's really just betting/gambling (staking money, for the chance of gain, on an uncertain outcome).

And like other forms of gambling, it's a negative sum game because you always lose money to the "house". In the case of share trading, slippage due to dealing fees, bid-ask spread, stamp duty etc.

If you accept that fact, then it just comes down to how responsibly you do it, and whether your approach has any statistical advantage.

[d000hg]

Trading shares is gambling.

But if you do your work, it's educated gambling. You're playing the statistics.
"it's gambling" is a poor argument because there is a huge difference between betting on a random event like a coin-toss, and spending your life studying the form of every horse and jockey.

I wouldn't do short-term stuff unless I knew the company inside out though. Investment is sensible but also quite boring.

[Moose423956]

Thanks for all of the helpful tips. I'm getting the impression that short-term trading is a mug's game. Maybe I'll take up the ukulele instead....

Cheers
Moose

[cannon999]

Trading shares is gambling.

Investing is where it's at but if you are starting to do that at retirement age then what's the point? It takes 30+ years to scale up a portofolio.

[d000hg]

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.

Eh? I can't remember if Binance supports fiat-crypto pairs (I don't have any real money in my account) but it supports stablecoins like USDT and USDC. If you're doing minute-by-minute trading on the train you must be moving it between different currencies anyway, wouldn't that typically be flipping BTC-USDC?

[DealorNoDeal]

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.

If you want this hobby to make some money, rather than lose money, you need to figure out what the "obvious prerequisite" to success is before you start.

https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threa...obvious.151802

How are you going to select which shares to buy? Unless you have some criteria which puts the odds in your favour, you will lose in the long run.

When will you sell? (You could do a Scooter, and never sell a share which is losing money but I wouldn't recommend this. )

Not every share you pick will be a winner. That's not possible. In fact, you can be net profitable with less than 50% winners. You just need to make more money on the winners than you lose on the losers.

Good luck!

[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.

[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.

[_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.

[Andy2]

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

[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.

[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.

[_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.

[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.