Personal share trading accounts

[Shabs]

Hi guys,

I have relented, I cannot sit by and watch this amount of vol without personally taking part!

1) Where is the best place to open a personal brokerage account
2) What is 'normal' for personal trading fees
3) Can I short through normal brokerage accounts or do I need to do something special (also, what would normal levels of collateral be for shorting stock?)

Thanks

Shabs

[Chilli]

Do you actually want to hold stock, or just spread bet?

[dan1981]

I want to actually deal in shares - "sell, buy" etc etc - but not massive amounts?

is there anywhere that lets you buy £100 quid of shares and then sell them a few minutes later?

Or does it not work like that?

[Shabs]

spread-betting scares me, actually holding assets is a form of downside risk mitigation. Spread-betting is very naked and I don't really want to day-trade, more buy and hold.

From my understanding, you need to buy in at least £2K intervals to make the fees worth while.

Shabs

[BlueEyedBoy]

dan1981 said:

I want to actually deal in shares - "sell, buy" etc etc - but not massive amounts?

is there anywhere that lets you buy £100 quid of shares and then sell them a few minutes later?

Or does it not work like that?

It does, but at that level you will be paying about £25 for the buy and sell, so for a £100 you will need to make 20% just to get your costs back. Min should be £1000 at least to even risk it.

Try

www.stockbrokers.barclays.co.uk

if your want to do it. But it sounds like you might not be ready yet, try paper trading with paper, see if you make anything, or more likely at the moment, see what you would have lost.

Edited by BlueEyedBoy on Friday 10th October 12:40

[B16JUS]

ive got a natwest stockbrokers account works well i think and easy to use

J

[Famous Graham]

There was an online personal thing that only cost 12.50 per transaction. Was handy for mucking about with 500 quid or so of float and playing. Was about 5 years ago though, so I've no idea if they're still going.

And nor can I remember the name.

So that was useful then

[Famous Graham]

Googling while trying to jog my memory threw up the Fool. Didn't realise they were offering a personal share dealing thing :

http://www.fool.co.uk/share-dealing/share-dealing....

[jamesc_1729]

I used to use Hoodless Brennan - cheapest online dealer.

I liquidised all my assets last summer though as I bought a house..(house down 12% since then, FTSE down 40%, game on.)

I too have been thinking about sinking 5k in shares at the moment and forgetting about them for 5-10 years.

Edited by jamesc_1729 on Friday 10th October 18:05

Edited by jamesc_1729 on Friday 10th October 18:05

[Famous Graham]

Oh and Money Supermarket have a comparison thing :

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/shares/CompareShar...