The FTSE

[SWP's back]

Made me laugh and I know exactly what you mean. I’ve been reading up on investments, shares, bonds etc for a while and still can’t get my head round the language of yields, shorts, etc

Yields is just the amount that an asset pays out to the holder each year.

So on a Bond/Gilt, it's its coupon value (Think of £100 note that also pays the holder interest every 12 months).

And on a Equity (Share), it's the dividend (share of profit) that each share holder is paid per share.

 

[flook]

Shorted just means that rather than buying an asset (like gold) and hoping it goes up, I bought oil and hoped it would go down in value. The 50x leverage means that I pay a small amount per day to "borrow" 50x my invested amount. This means (when shorting) that a 2% price increase would make me lose all my money, or a 2% decrease would double my money.

I only use a bit of play money for this sort of day trading (I don't go anywhere near managing my proper investments) as it may as well be gambling.

ah ok thanks, that looks even more of a risk than gambling (from my perspective at least), Seems you did very well with the oil then, even though you didn't hold out for the negative value :) nice one.

I was going to ask how you would go about this sort of trading, then thought better of it. I'd rather not know how to burn all my money, I'm capable of doing that without any help :):)

 

[SWP's back]

ah ok thanks, that looks even more of a risk than gambling (from my perspective at least), Seems you did very well with the oil then, even though you didn't hold out for the negative value :) nice one.

I was going to ask how you would go about this sort of trading, then thought better of it. I'd rather not know how to burn all my money, I'm capable of doing that without any help :):)

Ha. I use an app called eToro. But I must have deleted and re-installed it 30 times in the last few years.

 

[flook]

Ha. I use an app called eToro. But I must have deleted and re-installed it 30 times in the last few years.

don't tell me FFS

 

[SWP's back]

don't tell me FFS

It's quite good in that makes you do a test on the app to gauge your level of knowledge before it decides how much you're allowed to lose or leverage your investments by.

 

[flook]

It's quite good in that makes you do a test on the app to gauge your level of knowledge before it decides how much you're allowed to lose or leverage your investments by.

hehe it will just tell me to fuck off then

 

[Wafty Cranker]

Yeah, wish I had the money/timing to have nipped in when they were under £9 a few weeks ago. Rio Tinto fell back a lot too......precious metal miners have to be a good place to be ATM for the right price (you'd think). Bloody easy with hindsight, this shares caper.

Shell have cut their dividend, I didn't see that coming to be honest. Dropped today but still well up on the £9 from a few weeks ago.

 

[journolud]

hehe it will just tell me to fuck off then

The likes of IG allow you to have virtual accounts to see what you could have won/ lost. Don’t know if they cover shorting and spread betting and whatnot. Personally I steer clear of the virtual stuff and just try and make reasonable choices with my real money but they are there for those who want to play

 

[journolud]

Shell have cut their dividend, I didn't see that coming to be honest. Dropped today but still well up on the £9 from a few weeks ago.

Think we can say goodbye to a lot of dividends at the minute

 

[Wafty Cranker]

Think we can say goodbye to a lot of dividends at the minute

I thought Shell might have kept theirs. First time since WW2 that they've cut it apparently.

You can spread bet on IG. The thing those demo accounts don't teach you about is margin call. I had an account set up with Self Trade back years ago. I thought, for example if I had a £1,000 in an account and shorted something at £10 a point it would have to move against me for a 100 points before the position is closed. It didn't work like that. When I logged into my account I should have been say on a healthy profit, but instead Self Trade had closed my positions on me. I then made a big mistake and thought I'd go chasing after the profit I should have had, basically guessing on certain things, you can guess how that worked out!

Ever since then I give myself a little cool off period, if I think I'm trading on emotion. I'd compare it to going "on tilt" in poker. That was an expensive lesson.