FatCat's MoneyConfessions - helping you save (& make) money, one click at a time

Share Trading News Letters - Fat Profits, Rivkin at the like ?

Hi does any one have any experience or can recommend a good share info site. I've used Fat Profits in the past, they provide easy to read reports & recommendations but dispite them having a really good rate of return on their recommendations overall, I still managed to buy the wrong stocks that fell big time. I've not traded for over 2 years and would like to get back in now. Can anyone recommend a good site/subscription that provides good, easy to read info and a small list of recommended buys. Some of the sites give too much info and you'd need 100K or more to buy everything they recommended.

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bandwidth on November 19, 2009 at 7:05pm

Hello Paul

In my experience a large amount of education and research should be carried out before share trading. It may seem as easy as opening an account with a broker and using someone like Fat Prophets but as many have discovered it isn't.

These sites do not know your trading style, risk tolerance and profit goals so their recommendations are quite general. The pattern is to use the output from these sites as a filter and then make your own decisions.

My concerns about sites like these is they have the opportunity to pre trade. Where they have already traded the stock before the recommendations have been sent out. I am not suggesting any one has done this but it does cross my mind.

Another way is to buy into a leveraged portfolio manager.

The correct use of knowledge is the key to trading in any investment, you either get it yourself or find someone who you belive has the required skill and knowledge.

I know I have not directly answered the question but, hopefully, I have given you some food for thought.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Keith Musgrave on November 20, 2009 at 11:32am

Hi Paul,
Bandwidth's advice is very good.

From a financial advisers perspective, there are a number of key issues to consider.

Shares are a "liquid" investment, which means you can wake up this morning and decide to sell your shares. And, by lunchtime they are sold. You can't do that with property. It takes months from the time you decide to sell real property to the time it actually settles and is no longer yours. That is the main reason for the stability of the property market. If it was the same as shares, it would be just as volatile as shares. The second reason why real property is less volatile, is that there is a much larger demand for property. Everybody needs to live somewhere, and so the demand is greater. The more demand, the more stable the investment.

Key issues in share investments are:
1) Your time frame in investing. That is, how long do you plan to own a particular stock for. If you have a 5 year investment view, then you will "ride out" the bumps. If you plan to actively trade in shares, then you MUST be prepared for the volatile nature of the share market.
2) Knowledge of the particular share you wish to purchase. This is the absolute key to investing in shares. Which share do you buy and why? Are you looking for capital growth (increase in share price) or are you more interested in the dividend paid by owning a particular share?
3) Risk tolerance. Can you pass the "sleep test". If you invest your "hard earned" in a particular share, will you be able to sleep at night. (This to me is the most important 1. If you tend to worry about your investments, you probably shouldn't invest in the share market in a big way).

Websites that provide information about shares are there purely to give you information about individual shares.

IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO DO AS MUCH HOMEWORK AS YOU CAN TO MAKE AN INFORMED DECISION ABOUT WHAT SHARE TO BUY.

THERE IS NO SHORTCUT if you want to invest in direct shares. The more knowledge you have the better decision you will make.

MANAGED FUNDS are the shortcut if you want to invest in shares but don't know what to buy. They offer you the ability to invest small parcels of money into a large diversity of shares which are then managed by the "fund manager" for a fee.

To invest in anything, shares, property, vintage wine, art, cars, race horses, etc, the decision of what to buy is YOURS and therefore the RESPONSIBILITY for that decision is also YOURS.

What lessens your risk is the knowledge you have about that particular investment.

People make money out of all sorts of things. Mainly because they are involved in the industry or they get the knowledge to make an informed decision.

But remember, we have just seen the share market halve in value in the space of 6 months. Even those people involved in the share market did not see that coming. However, we get opportunities like this about 3 or 4 times in our lives. Be prepared for them. You could have turned $100,000 into $400,000 over the last 6 months if you were prepared.

I hope this helps a little

Keith

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by ff123 on November 24, 2009 at 7:10pm

Am learning how to trade - the actual trading bit is easy - but I found the Sharemarket Games provided by the ASX to be invaluable as it allowed me to buy and sell and try and make a profit in a set period of time - I actually ended up Up which means some of the decisions I made were good - some weren't.

Now I'm actually honing my style and trying to follow the Buffet formula and work out how much a company is actually worth - find it undervalued and wait for the market to catch on.

At the moment the market seems to be like watching lemmings - one day there is a stampede into commodities, the next it's back into banks - guess you need to decide what your style is and remember the Fund Manager is your friend as he has to buy on the 30th of the month and especially the end of the quarter.