Andy's Story

I started investing towards the end of 2018 with very little knowledge. My main approach was to subscribe to investing magazines and scour for anything that looked interesting; really just going by personal bias on what I read.

In 2019 I read the Naked Trader which then added a couple of measures to my reading i.e if I saw a stock being tipped, I would try and workout how much debt they had and how much profit they were making to see if that improved the investment case. I also started tracking the NT website, to see if that brought anything interesting to light. By the end of 2019 I had build a basic scraping tool that would scrape data from free stock market data sites. I built a model around the Naked Trader recommendations and then had another source for further research. My tool highlighted Spirent and Spectra Systems, which I purchased and they went on to do quite well. Once I realised Stockopedia did all of this and more I stopped my scraping tool and bought a Stockopedia subscription.

Stockopedia has had a massive positive impact and has added a security blanket to my decisions. Stockopedia has:

• Opened my eyes to a great online investor community.
• Given me a daily Small Cap Value Report - reviewing Paul and Jack's daily report is a must!
• Allowed me to use the Guru Screens for ideas - I especially love the Jim Slater one.
• Made research much more enjoyable using the StockReports. I'm rubbish at doing my own research, but I feel like the StockReports & RNS news gives me all I need.

I have a much better source of stocks to research, and I can now get a good view of the company I am planning on buying. Stockopedia has definitely improved the quality of my investments. I can't really comment on results as 2019 was fairly flat and 2020 has been a bit of a rollercoaster. I certainly feel I have made better selections through Stockopedia, although I tend to accept a fairly high level of risk.

Read the Naked Trader book as it makes everything quite simple. It gives you enough to start with, without feeling like you need to be an Analyst to succeed in the markets. Definitely get a Stockopedia subscription to go with it. Learn to understand the StockRanks, how to read a stock report and get stock ideas from the screens. Above all, invest in yourself. You can only get better if you are willing to read and learn around investing. Find an investing community to join and discuss; my friends and family think i have turned boring since investing as they are not interested in any of it. I find it all very exciting!