Stocks and shares online - investing in UK markets

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Investing money in stocks and shares online is not a pursuit suited to everyone. This is primarily down to the fact that no investment is guaranteed to succeed in the UK market.

Where a person's hard-earned cash is concerned this level of uncertainty is often too high a risk to take. Another reason people give for choosing alternative areas of investment is that they do not really understand the market. Moreover, anything they have learnt or heard about it makes them even less likely to invest, as most media coverage centres on the misfortunes, rather than the fortunes, of investors.

This negative picture is not helped by the way we portray the very nature of the stock market - as a ruthless, cut-throat industry, full of fast-talking, hard-hitting city slickers out to make whatever they can regardless of who they trample on in the process.

In reality, the stock market can be one of the best ways of investing your money. Although you are unlikely to enjoy a great return in the short-term, longer term investments of five or ten years or more on the whole do very well. In fact the UK stock market has seen an average annual growth of over 12% over the last sixty years, which is much more impressive than the returns you can get in any savings account!

According to recently published figures, a £1,000 investment made twenty-five years ago could today be worth as much as £36,000. In comparison, a building society account is likely to have earned only one tenth of this (£3,600) in interest, and when you consider that inflation will eat up practically all of that, there really is no contest.

So how do you go about investing on the stock exchange?

Firstly, do some research and get good advice. One of the main reasons people lose money when buying and selling shares is that they try to do it without taking advice. Doing this may save you in commission in the short-term, but buying the wrong type of shares at the wrong time could lose you a lot more in the long run, and this is something you are much more likely to do if you go it alone.

Use the pages within this section of the website to gain information on stocks and shares and the way that the stock market works.

© The Pink Fridge Online Magazine 2008 - Stocks and Shares