Risks

I've read plenty about people who've basically risked everything to become rich. I think the ability to take risks is very important in making money. They should be calculated risks though. So I might have to put more of a proportion of money into shares- even though that's 'risky'.

United Utilities

United Utilities article up on ShareProphets.

Why Should you Read Share Articles?

What’s the benefit for you in reading share articles? Well there are three main groups of people I can see benefiting from reading.

First group. If you have a good amount of money you can buy the right share at the right time and makes lots more money. And it doesn’t have to be an obscure share to make lots of money. My best share purchase was buying Legal and General on 20th February 2009 at 36.88p- they’re now 241.2p. That’s a rise of nearly 660% in five and a half years! I bought BT on 29th April 2009 at 89.39p- both these totals have all stamp duty and costs included. They’re now 382.6p and have been higher. Now I haven’t really got a LOT of money overall, but does make me happy that I can make good gains on the money I have- and you can do the same!

Second group. You just have an interest in shares! You may well work for one of the companies written about, or they may be your competition. So you want to know overall how they doing. I read lots of share articles every day. I’m mainly bothered that you read MY share articles to be honest, but there are lots of other good ones out there. Some are quite entertaining and informative to read.

Third group. You want to buy shares... but don’t have the money yet. That’s fine, many people were like this at some point. Let’s look at my ‘share history’. To be strictly accurate, the first time I ever bought a share was when I was fifteen years old in 1998. My dad said I had too much in cash and said I should buy some shares. He gave me a share magazine to look through and I selected Manchester United without knowing anything ‘fundamental’ about the share. My dad approved and bought some as well. I made good gains from it- over 100% if I remember rightly, but I never even really checked the share price. I first consciously bought my own shares in 2005 after reading a lot about them. Was quite hard to open a sharedealing account then- I believe it’s easier now. I could only put in relatively small amounts of money at first but it built up over time. I ran ‘virtual portfolios’ for a bit but moved onto buying real shares fairly quickly. So you can do the same- ‘buy’ some shares you have researched in a virtual portfolio. There are plenty of sites on the internet that will allow you to do this. Remember though, to be truly accurate you should add stamp duty of 0.5% onto your purchase price, plus the dealing costs- some of these virtual portfolios won’t do that for you. You may have to pay a small ‘spread’ on top of the normal buying price too- but personally now with the share dealing service I use I get good prices where I don’t have to.

Personally I would say start investing in shares as soon as you can, or as young as you can. That’s what I did. Even if you only make OK gains from the start, or even if hypothetically you only made as much money as you would from your bank account, I would still say it’s worth it for the experience of learning about shares. To be honest, you would have to be doing badly to make only as much from a bank account at the moment. There are literally millions of people in the UK who have 0% saving rates in their current accounts. There will be millions of others who will not be getting much more than that. In terms of anything like an instant access account you will be lucky to get more than 2% per year, and then you will have to pay in a certain amount every month and only get that kind of interest up to a set amount. There are plenty of decent shares out there with yields over 4.5%, where you will get paid four times a year or twice a year, instead of just once a year usually from a savings account.

All I would say is make sure you can put away at least £1000 ideally, and that you won’t need that money for a MINIMUM of one year. For a new investor I would say at least two years to be honest. I personally haven’t sold any shares for over seven years- the longer you hold them the better!

New Article on ShareProphets

New article on ShareProphets

British American Tobacco

New British American Tobacco post on @ShareProphets

Some Insight Into How I write about Shares

So I'm pleased with the amount of people reading my share articles so far. I never imagined this would be happening say six months ago. I still have a lot to learn but for the near future at least I can see me writing at least one share article per day.

Here're a few insights into how and why I write my share articles. So far, I have only written about shares that I personally own. Again, I can see this being the case for quite a while. One of the main reasons for this is that you know I personally have put my hard earned money into it- so you can believe me when I say I rate a company. Another big reason is that I have often put many hours of research into these companies, which I aim to condense into an easy to read format enabling YOU to decide whether you want to buy them or not. Of course, once reading these articles you should do your own research on the companies. Looking back, I think personally I have been slightly too influenced by reading articles then quickly after buying the shares- there are plenty of other factors to be taken into account.

I have not mentioned 'forward PEs' or anything in terms of 'forward guidance'. This is because quite often this is guesswork. Much better to focus on the current facts.

At some point I'd like to write a post about the importance of charts when buying shares, but honestly I don't know enough about that yet. I am thinking about writing a post somewhere about all the possible things I would check before buying a share... that would be pretty long though. I really believe that a lot of people reading things on the internet have quite short attention spans so often you have to make things readable and easy to digest so that's what I aim to do!

NEW ADDITION

THANK YOU for reading my articles. The way it works at the moment I am paid a small amount for every unique view I get- so I need quite a high amount of unique views to make it worth my time! This does involve you signing up to ShareProphets for free to read the full article (just like Fool) but I honestly believe this is worth your time!

SSE Article

New SSE article published. Read to see my personal experience with SSE!

New Strategic Thinking Article Published On Share Prophets

New post published on ShareProphets! One of my best yet, great if you're thinking of starting to invest in shares

BP Article Published on ShareProphets

New BP article published on ShareProphets. Check it out :)!

Sainsbury's Article Published at ShareProphets!

Delighted to have my Sainsbury's article published at ShareProphets! Lots of other interesting articles there too so check out the site now please!

Plan!

After all this wondering how to make money I think the best way could be just to put practically all of my money in shares- when I think the price is right. Leave money that I need in the next year to be on safe side. You could say that's 'risky' but I'm sure in long run I'd make good cash.

What Percentage of Money should you have in Shares?

Had interesting thought... it wouldn't matter if you had 'too much money' (percentage wise) in shares as long as they went up and did well. You probably shouldn't invest money that you think you might need in the next 2 years... but had another thought. It'd be much better to buy shares that went up then have to sell them in say 1.5 years rather than have lousy rate of interest. So I guess I'm talking myself into SELLING some shares for the first time in over 7 years if I have to. Note there are none I would sell atm!

Adding to this after a bit more thought. Of course... the shares can go DOWN. So really the longer you can afford to leave them the better. And it also matters how much time you can spend on shares to an extent. If you're working full time you may find it difficult to buy and sell when you need to- although you could still put in buy and sell limit orders. The better you are at understanding shares the shorter time frame you could have...

But anyway, I would recommend my readers if they can afford it to have at least some money in shares. You have to know what you're doing, but it really isn't that hard. Read my Fool posts and other Fool writers. I have some more posts written too- I'll be writing about shares that I own at least at first. Probably for quite a while though.

Share Writer!

Hi all, So... what have I been doing?

Investing more in shares really. I've come to the conclusion that I'm comfortable having much more of my money in shares. Got a good track record and just like watching them go up. Interest rate is lousy. Even had the thought recently... I could just put money into shares that potentially I might need in two years... slightly risky I guess, but also risky in another way leaving it to earn little interest. I haven't actually done this yet but would probably be OK with doing so.

At the moment I can't write Fool articles because of the change in Yahoo syndication... hopefully I will in the future though! So I'm looking at potentially writing for other share websites, will keep you posted! I've reached out to another Fool writer for some advice on this and any other advice is welcome!