Learning To Invest | New To This - Information And News Feeds

21st Apr '17 by Springfield Barton

15 comments 6581 reads

Hi All,
A newbie here with a lot of learning to do, so far 2 months of reading + starting to create my own fantasy portfolio and some silly wild punts (first time investor madness!) Small starting stack in an ISA but will be increasing as my knowledge and confidence increases. (Maybe even share the experience as I move forward)

So here's the thing - information and news sites needed. I have been randomly diving into sites below and scanning random sites on google.

ADVNF - (not a paid subscriber yet)
iii.com
HL
BBC and various news and newspaper sites...
Stockopedia

I feel that this is only the tip of the iceburg and would be delighted if other can share where they read and what they read. Not after tipping sites but news and information to learn more about investing.

Many thanks H

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Cuthbert C

21st Apr '17

You've missed the most critical newsflow - Regulatory News Service (RNS) announcements are the prescribed regulatory mechanism which ensures all price sensitive info is made available to the markets simultaneously. Companies are obliged to issue RNSs through a well established process rather than dribble news out in an arbitrary fashion.

There are several websites that provide access to RNSs. I use www.investegate.com which is free.

First investment related thing I do every day is check Investegate just after 7am when the majority of news comes through. I've set the search parameters to show everything for the current day and I scan through it all. I find that much more interesting than restricting the news to just the companies on a watchlist. But you can do that if it works for you.

HTH

T

Another site I use all day long is Moneyam.com which provides real time share prices for free.

matylda

Do also go and try the Naked Trader book and his website - Great info for those new to the game - The Naked Trader book itself is much better than the Shark and Spread betting ones.

willhampson

Hi, to echo the above I would recommend finding yourself a provider of up-to-date RNSs. I think investegate is good, but also use Vox Markets. They have a free app, which will alert you when a screened stock issues an RNS, which is very handy on the go.

In terms of website, proactive investor is also another good shout.

janebolacha

Depending on the style of investing which you will develop over time, you might want to set up Google Alerts for particular companies or markets or particular aspects of these. That is a means of deepening your knowledge of companies and markets from sweeping up all kinds of stuff that appears on the web. How far down you go in this depends on your style of investing. I run with a relatively small number of investments but try to get to know them in some depth (my humanities critical analysis skills usefully recycled!), so that, for instance, on IQE (LON:IQE) I have alerts set up on 3D sensing cameras, on the future iphone8, etc. On Burford Capital (LON:BUR) alerts are set up on developments in major cases they are involved in, such as the Petersen/YPF case and the Aerolíneas Argentinas case. However you might decide to invest, Google Alerts might bring you a great deal of extra information to help your investment decisions.

Edit: A subscription to "Research Tree" is £25 a month well spent, imo. Better that than spending money on ADVN. And besides moneyam referred to by tournesol (post 2), there's Google Finance for free live prices.

Rusty2

I agree about Investegate, it's good to get all the updates before the market opens.

I would be wary of bulletin boards such as ADVNF, iii and LSE .

Yes Naked Trader is well worth reading.

Stockopedia is good but there is a lot that you may not be aware of, it takes a bit of time to learn but everything is at your finger tips. You may want to set up some folios on Stockopedia and see how they perform before actually investing your money.

Springfield Barton

Thank you for this I appreciate it this...

Yes I have just finished reading the Naked Trafer it was very engaging and understandable to me being a novice. The next mission is to re-read and take notes and highlight some of the key points that resonate with me.

Hi All, thank you for the input, I have created several dashboards on Netvibes that now brings all the feeds into a single site for me to review. I use netvibes for this what tools do other use for bringing all this information into a single few pages...

JohnEustace

24th Apr '17

Remember to look at the investors information on the websites of companies you are looking at buying to download and read annual reports etc.

Phil Oakley from Sharescope has a very good "Step-by-Step Guide to Investment Analysis" guide that looks to be available to non-subscribers:
http://www.sharescope.co.uk/philoakley.jsp#guide

I don't know which books you have already read but looking at my bookshelf I recommend starting with the Naked Trader by Robbie Burns as already mentioned by others plus:

The Art of Execution - Lee Freeman-Shor
Come Into My Trading Room - Alexander Elder
Trade Like a Stock Market WIzard - Mark Minervini
Beyond The Zulu Principle - Jim Slater
The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
How To Make Money In Stocks - William O'Neill
What Works on Wall Street - James O'Shaughnessy
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator - Edwin LeFevre

How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market - Nicolas Darvas

How To Make a Million Slowly - John Lee

Howard Adams

Hi Edvesting

Your investing goals and style will lead you to different forms of information as will your own learning style.

I developed my investing intelligence reading MoneyWeek, Investors Chronicle and several investing letters like Stephen Bland's HYP portfolio & Dr Mike Stubbs's R&D portfolio to name but two.

I also follow some pundits whom I respect such as Tim Price, Charlie Morris, Phil Oakley, the interviews Merryn Somerset Webb does on MoneyWeek and Tim Bennetts excellent educational video clips (see YouTube).

Subscribing to Stockopedia and reading all the great stuff on the site (Paul Scott, Ed, Roland Head and many others as well as all the smart Stocko subscribers) then turbocharged this background education into a more refined investing capability. This I try to enhance by reading the highly recommended texts such as Ben Graham's Intelligent Investor.

I fully endorse comments made earlier, before committing too much real money, decide on a set of investing rules, use Stockopedia to find some socks and set up a portfolio to see how you do. I believe it will teach you a lot, but safely.

Ohh PS - one big lesson I acquired was to make up your mind whether start from designing a portfolio and then buying stocks to align with your portfolio design. Or you start from being an individual stock picker and acquire a portfolio as a consequence. I favoured the former as it drove me towards diversification, rebalancing, considerations for market caps, even distribution of initial investments and so on. That said, the latter is also very productive for some.

All the best.

Regards
Howard

25th Apr '17

Thank you John and Howard, lots to take in, plus still do the day job.... the plan will be to experiment with a couple of fantasy folios. I am just transferring an older small pension into a SIPP for investing, this will be enough to get me started but also will not kill me if I make a few mistakes although the way.

Reference styles of investing that has been something that I am struggling to piece together, balancing a style that I can work around my day job will be key, and will be a factor moving forward.

Lincoln W

Another newbie here. how is the accuracy of the stock report provided by stockopedia? anyone tried before?

26th Apr '17

Hi Ed,
I agree with constructing a fantasy portfolio and measuring your performance that way. The most important thing when starting is to limit your losses so whatever happens you don't get wiped out. It's all very well learning some expensive lessons - we all have - but if you then have no cash left you can't put your new wisdom to work.

That being said, for me personally I'm not really paying attention or learning any lessons until I have some of my actual hard earned money on the line. So when you are ready I suggest starting small with modest positions and building gradually from there. Because for me putting things on a watchlist or in a fantasy portfolio is akin to forgetting them, these days I open a small position in shares that I think are promising and see how they go. I dump them quickly if the market moves against me and add to my position if things go well.
And when you have built up some profits you will face the most difficult decisions - if and when to sell!

Thanks John, you are right that having some skin in the game brings more focus, but have 2 things that I need to complete before making any additional steps, transfer into SIPP and sale of a house.

This then gives me the time I need to develop knowledge...

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Springfield Barton

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