I want to learn how to trade shares myself. I only have a small amount of money to start me out and was thinking Commsec might be the place to start. But other than that I literally have no knowledge or experience in this. I am looking for someone to teach from the very start. Is this something that people teach or do I just start blindly? I don't have have a lot to start out but I want to do this and work at it.
2 Replies
In Adelaide the WEA (adult learning centre) runs courses on how to invest.
I honestly think it would be a bad idea for your to invest directly in shares, or anything for that matter that you don't understand. There are courses that can help you understand how it all works and what to look for, but if you are looking to "pick" good stocks to outperform the market, you need more than just training, you need to be monitoring the market all the time. To give you some idea, even most financial planners don't pick stocks to make millions and beat the market, Stockbrokers and fund managers are the only ones that do this kind of thing as they are in the market all time.
Some could argue that you could pick some relatively "safe" Australian stocks (Eg ASX top 100 companies by market capitalisation) from a few different industries and establish a portfolio that way but I think you should look into managed funds. Yes, they come at a cost, but they are professionally managed by those that are monitoring the markets constantly. Read up on index funds, they are relatively cheap and depending on what you go with, can be a pretty safe option. Also, if you set up a managed fund, you can redirect any income back into the fund and take advantage of compounding. You can also add funds to the investment regularly and take advantage of dollar cost averaging. Start by googling these terms, having a look at various index funds with the bigs guns like: vanguard, colonial, BT etc. and see what you think. Look at the fees and compare.