Any recommendations for books on investing?

FYI there are International Mutual funds that do just that. I’d suggest you look at Vanguard And Fidelity. There’s also penny stocks, Bond Funds. I really suggest to find a broker or teach yourself the financial business

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First save your money. Pay yourself first. Second, I have people I trust. They have made a career out of this, a profession. It would be insulting to them if a layman could read a couple books and know as much as a professional. But, on the other hand, with the wrong person handling it…so. They key is finding good people. Last March were I doing it I would have bailed on the market when I was approaching 6 figures down. I told them I wanted out. They said they’d quit and I’d need another broker. Lol…thank God they did. I’m recovered and far above where I was. Save your money. Find a firm you trust. Where are you?

A colleague used to use Fidelity, and I’v become aware of Vanguard in recent days.

I’m in the UK, and at this stage really just looking to understand the markets better than I do, with their attendant terminology and diverse array of investment options.

Would have to agree that unless incredibly lucky, I’d be unlikely to better a seasoned professional’s advice.

Probably should have got more clued up 10-15 years ago but perhaps better late than never.

I certainly don’t have a huge sum to invest currently, but may get some lump sums in coming years so really trying to figure out what to do with those should they eventually realise, so smaller scale plans to begin with may give me short term experience.

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A good starting point is the “Which?” magazine. They have an investment spin off. Much is online and free, though inevitably there is the occasional nudge to sign up.

It deals with things in bite size chunks and is UK centric. I like their style, it is very accessible.

Google: Which investing

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Thanks Ravvie. Excellent advice from all so far.

Might be worth a look at the LSE website or other exchange that takes your interest. Lots of information there, can see the daily news bulletins, see how the charting tools work and different ways of displaying data. I think if you create an account (free) there are charting and watchlist tools.

If there are any companies that you know a bit about, assuming that they are publically listed you can ‘dig into them’, see internal announcements, reports etc. Most companies have a section on their websites called ‘Investor Relations’ or something similar.

Or you could investigate music related companies, AudioBoom, Focusrite, GearForMusic, Spotify. A lot of the smaller UK manufacturers won’t have public listings - it’s quite expensive.

As others have said, you need a couple of months of background reading to give you a basic framework of ideas and concepts.

Most ‘retail’ investing (i.e. the likes of you and me) is done wholly online and there are several platforms that allow you to do this and it’s getting more competitive on charges and pricing. Some platforms offer access to a wider range of stocks/funds/trusts/bonds than others but all the ‘popular’ retail investments will be available on all of the sites, and within an ISA wrapper.

You need to have a good understanding of what your finances are / will be and what sort of provision you want to make for your family. Deciding how to access pension benefits can be complex especially if you are self-employed and/or have multiple pensions.

There have been differences of opinion on here about the value of paying for financial planning advice but if you were to talk to someone about financial planning then you can state that one of your objectives is to have a small amount for self-investment.

As I said in my previous post I think it’s a really fascinating area.

Again, very helpful.

I’ll annoyingly have a combination of final salary and CARE pension components when I retire, but they have different retirement dates and I’d have to defer taking the second until state retirment age or take early with actuarial adjustments. There would be no enhancement to the pension with the earlier retirement date if I deferred it apart from presumably index linking it in some form. To make it worse there is a lot of ambiguity at the moment due to transitional scheme arrangements when the older one ceased with legal cases with respect to age discrimination. Frankly an utterly confusing mess which has made it difficult to plan, along with other bizarre pensions related taxation issues.

As you say I need to read up and glean a lot of information about my options/what I want to do/risk investment wise - life is hectic currently and has been for a long time which is probably why I’ve not done this before.

It sounds like you could do with some advice on the order and timing to crystallize the benefits of the two schemes before advice on investing!

In the UK It is usually less hassle to crystallize defined benefit schemes before defined contribution ones if you have a mixture and you are near the LTA.

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I certainly will need it, but at the moment there are lots of ambiguities in terms of resolving the ‘age discrimination’ component where older members were allowed to stay on the old scheme, thosea few years younger allowed tapering of old/new scheme transfer and those younger again pushed to a new scheme with no tapering period. I am hopeful that some of the CARE component (current pension) may be optionally switched to final salary if I choose to do so closer to retirment, however I’ve seen examples at a webinar where this may or may not have been beneficial depending on individual circumstances. In addition pot growth from gaining a few years could have unpredictable retrosepctive annual allowance implications which might hurt. It’s an utter mess but I have a few years yet.

Hi
Not able to recommend any books, but would suggest the following

Daily Telegraph Questor pages are useful for advice and background/context for the market and what is happening, The Times is good too
I would always suggest investing in unit trusts or investment trusts for those who are not very experienced in share trading, many organisations offer access to these funds for example Fidelity and Youinvest.
Investing is this way is attractive as you can drip feed in via monthly payments as well as adding larger lump sums - monthly investing from 50 pounds per month smooths out your risk.

any book written by Warren Buffet may be worth a read

Good luck

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obviously if you haven’t used your allowance yet - you should invest via an ISA
its amazing how much say 100 pounds invested every month can increase to over the years - if you pick the right funds

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Thanks samuel99.

My day job is a bond trader (for a firm that has been mentioned above) and have been doing it for many years with a bit of sidetrack into IT for a few years. My advice is to ignore any advice :slight_smile: but here is mine - Investopedia on the web is good for looking things up and free, makes things easily understandable. A common “gotcha” is to take profits too quickly as you have made money and then run losses into the ground as you have an emotional attachment to them. Don’t be afraid to cut a loss if the situation changes, it can be the smartest trade you will do. You need to understand that you will not be 100% right all the time, so as long as you are right more times than wrong you will be making money. EVERYBODY looses money so again don’t be scared to take a hit and move on to the next thing. With all the QE in the world at the moment things are not normal and not likely to go back to normal anytime soon. I would also echo paper trading at first it is a great way of getting involved and making you “sharp”.

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I think it is important to differentiate between short-term trading and long-term investing - although the two are not mutually exclusive it is essential to assign your investment pot to different levels of risk, e.g volatile stock and currencies/crypto-currencies should only be a small part of a portfolio. Individual shares carry risk as well, and even pooled investments (Woodford, Bernie Madoff) can fail too.

Market-timing is difficult. One of Britains most successful fund managers, Terry Smith, included this statement in an article published in the Financial Times last August ‘When it comes to so-called market timing there are only two sorts of people: those who can’t do it, and those who know they can’t do it. It’s safer and more profitable to be in the latter camp.’

@biddler66 refers to the traders psychological problem of taking profits too early, and a tendency to running losses- …even for stock / ETF / investment trusts one should apply a trailing stop loss rule that gives enough ‘room to breathe’ for small dips but saves from the bigger losses.

Also, There is a conservative-minded investment channel on YouTube called ‘PensionCraft’. The author mainly focuses on the Vanguard funds which have a wide coverage and different purposes - but this is a good place to start, as well as some of the other information sources such as Investopedia mentioned above.

Finally remember the Einstein quote ’ “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.”, and look up the Rule of 72 regarding compounding e.g. 10% compounded per annum will double the principle amount in value in 7.2 years - and the S&P500 index is a case in point.

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They have a Canadian branch, so I suspect they also have a UK branch.
A big part is their members chat forum, to discuss the best investments they are in, and still in.

Overall, The Motley Fool’s biggest goal is to remove the confusion, simplify the process, so that you are now knowledgable and in emotional control of what you are investing in.
They recommend companies that are healthy, well established, and well managed; and they also recommend when to sell and move on, as do the members on the chat forum.

If people took the time to manage their investments properly, and safely, they wouldn’t need to work a job as well, and they would be retiring sooner. It’s really not magic, or gambling, if you learn and stick to the basic tried and true principles.
But if you don’t enjoy the reading and research required, then just find a good investment advisor to invest your funds as mentioned in some of the other posts.

The Money Mustache blog is a fun and informative read. I’ve recently set up some investment funds accounts after researching the historical performance of various ones and looking at the retirement planner advice on-line that the Retirement Commission provides here in NZ. The industry is quite well regulated and transparent here, so I found it quite easy to find a few companies and various fund types to spread the risk.

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I’m a chicken and leave it up to our financial planner. It helps that our eldest son is in finance and also keeps an eye on things. I’ve threatened him that we’d come to live with him if he got it wrong.

I would love to pull some money out and play around with the market.

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