Confessions of a Share novice!

Friday, 30th May 2008 14:33 - by Resident IFA

I have to admit that, despite being involved with lse.co.uk, I have little experience of Shares. As regular readers know, I am responsible for the Personal Finance side of the site – it’s slow and painstaking progress, but bear with us! To this end, I know a lot about Insurance, Mortgages, Pensions, and Collective investments, but am a novice when it comes to Shares. Just before Christmas, one of the staff at lse recommended a good read called ‘The Naked Trader’. As luck would have it, a revised edition had been published a few days before. I sat there over the holiday period, hoovering up all the information and, like the anorak I can be, wrote notes on a pad here and there! I found it to be a great book for the beginner, despite the author’s frequent mentions of a certain competitor’s website…we’re far better! It also provided some good ideas for how we can improve lse’s Share sections over time, especially in research facility terms. I haven’t had chance to put the things I learned from reading NT into practice, still having the odd ‘traditional’ shareholding in my box and having bought into a couple of ‘folklore’ shares in the past…Dragon Oil, anybody?! What fascinates me is how committed small investors are to their Share-dealing. Lse’s Share Chat section is vibrant, busy, thought-provoking, even contentious (occasionally!), but never dull. The monikers people use are brilliant too - such as IzzySkint, rodhull, Lemming, and BoredMum! This leads me to the point of all this waffling. If you would like to add your Share thoughts and experiences - how you started, the highs, the lows, your goals – please make me aware in the Comments box (just your lse ‘name’) and I will be in touch. Who knows, you might even have attended a Naked Trader seminar or made a fortune from small beginnings! Until next time…