Trading Stocks and Shares Online

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Trading Stocks, Shares, Bonds and Commodities Online

How to trade shares on line and which broker to use.

Many online and high-street banks provide stock-broking services either online or by phone. This article is about what you need to get started and also some recommendations about brokers and investment web-sites available in the U.K.

For reviews of brokers SelfTrade and Interactive Investor and advice about how to trade shares, stocks, bonds and commodities and links to more of my investment and finance articles see below:

What are the Twitter community are investing in:
What are you going to invest in this week: bonds, gold, stocks, usa, europe, japan, cash...?

SelfTrade

Selftrade is a very good choice for a company share trading account. There are several other trading accounts I would recommend for personal share dealing or spread-betting etc. depending on what type of transactions I want to make (e.g. some are better for foreign shares or for warrants etc.). You will however be a little restricted with the company account, because many of the inexpensive on-line providers do not allow business accounts. Selftrade does.

Selftrade has a low fee for regular investments. i.e. you set up a series of trades that you would like to occur once a month. This normally costs £1.50 per trade plus stamp duty, which is a good way to build up a balanced portfolio of a lot of shares for a small fee. There are restrictions however. You can only invest in FTSE 100 company shares, or a very small selection of investment trusts and ETFs, although these are chosen to give a good balanced mix from across the world. There is also just one day a month on which you can invest and the trades must be set up at least a day before. You can also invest in unit trusts for free, but then that is standard practice for most brokers, as they make their money from the bid-offer spread. The minimum amount per trade is £50.

Interactive Investor (www.iii.co.uk) has a similar deal, except the range of shares, investment trusts and ETFs available is enormous, including some very obscure smaller companies, with a fee of £1.50 and four days per month on which the regular investment may be made and a minimum purchase of £30

SelfTrade Stock Broker Review

SelfTrade Stock Broker Review

SelfTrade is a good, inexpensive, on-line UK stock-broker with good fast intuitive trading and account management via their web-site. Here is a review of Selftrade, their web-site and the services they offer: Low-cost real-time stocks and share trad...

Investment books

Motley Fool UK Investment (3 Ed Tpb

by: David Berger, Tom Gardner, James Carlisle

Amazon Price: (as of 11/28/2009)

How to Avoid Tax on Your Stock Market Profits

by: Lee Hadnum

Amazon Price: $46.95 (as of 11/28/2009)

The UK Trader's Bible

by: Dominic Connolly

Amazon Price: $43.80 (as of 11/28/2009)

SelfTrade Review

SelfTrade has a good web-site which is logically laid out and intuitive to use. For full details and a review of SelfTrade and how to use the web-site please see this Selftrade Review

Advantages: Easy to use website, business account allowed, good customer services

Disadvantages: Not quite the cheapest

Summary: Best for business accounts

CafePress

Interactive Investor (www.iii.co.uk)

Interactive Investor (www.iii.com) is a free investment web site that gives a very wide range of investment services, advice and news. I have been using this web site for several years now, initially just as a portfolio tool, but eventually using them as an on-line broker and for financial spread betting. The trading tools are sophisticated and reasonably priced, with a good basic share trading account and low-cost regular investment options or spread-betting, CFD trading and even LSE level 2 data for very active traders or "day-traders". They also provide tools to help choose the best mortgage, credit card, life insurance and loan deals available and ISAs and SIPPs can be opened and operated through this web site.

For a full review of this excellent stock broker and their web-site please see this Interactive Investor Review

Interactive Investor Broker Review

Interactive Investor Stock Broker

Interactive Investor (www.iii.co.uk) is a free investment web site that gives a very wide range of investment services, advice and news. Interactive investor web-site can be used just as a portfolio tool or as a full on-line broker. The trading tool...

More investment books

Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

by: Robert T. Kiyosaki

Amazon Price: $4.95 (as of 11/28/2009)

Rich Dad, Poor Dad for Teens: The Secrets About Money--that You Don't Learn in School!

by: Robert T. Kiyosaki

Amazon Price: $4.95 (as of 11/28/2009)

Rich Dad's Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest in, That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

by: Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter

Amazon Price: $12.99 (as of 11/28/2009)

Rich Dad's Conspiracy of the Rich: The 8 New Rules of Money

by: Robert T. Kiyosaki

Amazon Price: $9.35 (as of 11/28/2009)

Rich Dad's Retire Young, Retire Rich

by: Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter

Amazon Price: $12.21 (as of 11/28/2009)

Interactive Investor web-site features

For the full list of features and how to use the account: Interactive Investor (www.iii.com) Review

News, Markets and iBall TV

Share Dealing

Transferring funds

Discussion Boards and Mailing Lists

Advantages: huge variety of services, investment tools, inexpensive share trading, news

Disadvantages: News pages look a bit boring

Summary: One of the best UK investment websites

Alternative Good UK Stock Brokers

Hargreaves Lansdown

There are many other alternative on-line stock brokers in the UK which you may want to consider: Hargreaves Lansdown is another very good stock-broker offering similar services to SelfTrade and Interactive Investor although their emphasis is more towards unit trusts and OEICs than shares or Investment Trusts and they provide very good discounts on most unit trusts. As a result they are often described as a "fund supermarket".

Other good on line brokers include: TD Waterhouse; Barclays Stockbrokers; Halifax; E*Trade.

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praetserge praetserge Nov 24, 2009 @ 5:25 pm

Stock markets might look complicated and only for "professionals" but in fact it's quite simple and you need to understand just some basics. Then practice and learn from your mistake (remember you can always open demo accounts and trade for free).
UK Stock Brokers

Reply

mitchking mitchking Aug 31, 2009 @ 5:28 pm

Share trading is one of the most popular ways of investing money, normally for a short term, to take advantage of fast moving stocks. For the first timers, the process might look a bit complicated but the truth is it is very simple. You can also could try a Trading Online Course

Reply

rpenswick rpenswick Aug 4, 2009 @ 6:53 am

Hi andy, very interesting article. I'm in the process of opening a company account with selftrade but have no idea what this board resolution is meant to look like. Hoping u could give me some help, my e-mail is ricardo_penswick@hotmail.com. Many thanks

Reply

JaguarJulie JaguarJulie Jun 30, 2009 @ 7:51 am

Andy, I'll probably never feel comfortable to trade any shares online, but more power to those who do!

Reply

ElizabethJeanAllen ElizabethJeanAllen May 31, 2009 @ 6:08 pm

Very informative.
Thanks for Sharing
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