Investing money...? Stocks, shares...?

[delling]

Sooo... does anyone around here know something about investing money?

There's no interest from banks at the moment, and long-term investments don't really interest me.

I was thinking of high-risk stocks (technology, I guess), but are there better options? Is there a good place to start?

-D

[Nachmanun]

If you still have contact with Mike, i recall him having some high interest longterm stuff.
Edit, why am I writing here?

[delling]

Hehe. Just some other info: I'm not talking huge amounts of money.

A few thousand maybe -- but I'm not interested in waiting years for it grow. I want to double my investment quickly. I don't mind about the associated risks.

[Shiftey]

If you want to grow your money quickly, shares is definitely the way. Right now is a very good time to buy shares cause they are still mostly below their pre-crisis levels and they have potential to grow. Of course you really have to watch what is happening around the company you invested in cause anything that happens matters and can kill you.

Good idea would be to check the pre-crisis numbers and then see what is really low, do some research about that and see if it has a potential to grow back. But it's always a risk, we took a big hit when the crisis started, but it's slowly getting better now.

[Yoica]

Not really my part of the market, but for high risk high return investments you'll definitely want to look at new markets like China/India, even Russia. You might want to look into any (tele)communication companies that operate in those countries as that segment generally tends to lead the trends. Making it highly profitable investment when the company breakthrough.

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

Sadly stocks is quite a bit like the lottery as the financial crisis has shown there is no such thing as safe investments and the experts seem to be as bad as guessing as the rest of us.

Some economists are talking about "the double dip" which means in case they are right the crisis isnt over and we will get another big crash, in that case Shifteys strategy might fail in the short run.

I agree with Yoica that investing in countries with high growth rates makes more sense in terms of getting a high return on your investment fast, although they do ofcourse have a lot more risk involved.

[delling]

Ya, my first thought was telcos in India and China!

I presume I need to do this all through a broker?

[Yoica]

Yes, all transactions have to go through certified brokers.

[delling]

Do I need to find... a good one? One that specialises in emerging markets? I presume they all have the same commission or whatever...

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

The industry is full of vultures, I would ask around in the family for someone they trust.

Although if you know what you want to buy and you dont care about advice from the broker then you can probably just call your bank.

[Morbid]

If you want "quick" money you can try out starting buying and selling call and put options. It's the fastest way of doubling (or losing ofc.) you investments, but remember it's very risky!

Here some basics about call and put options.
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/options-the-basics-of-call-and-put/194327/

Just take your time and watch the stocks etc. for a while before jumping in, that can save you from losing money. (Believe me, been there done that )

Or you can try what i'm doing with some friends for the last couple of years.
We where all "investing" our money (not that it was muchos.) personally. Just buying/selling stocks and call/put options, when we decided it would be just as fun to pile some of it all up (a fixed equal amount of money) and come together every once in a while to decide what to buy/sell etc.

We started out with 1k euro's each the first year and decided we didn't want to much risk so we went for the long term strategy and bought various stocks, especially from companies who deal in basic everyday needs like food/oil/cloth (not the overpriced designer ones, the cheap ones who no one ever goes to, but strangely they still exists after so many years and still make huge profits. Especially in these financial hard times. )
 
We don't get to be billionairs any time soon unfortunally, but we do get around 4 times the % you normaly would get at an average bank. (What to they offer nowadays on a saving account? Somewhere between 2.3 and around 4% max. nowadays i guess.)
Ad up the fact you don't have to worry so much and it doesn't cost much time either and every year we all add 1k, in the long run it's a couple of extra holidays for all of us plus we can't touch that 1k we put in every year.

*edit* muchos typos missing ., etc. and still barely readable 

[Morbid]

Yes, all transactions have to go through certified brokers.

Just open a stock account at a bank and buy/sell stocks yourself, in this way you pay the bank for all your transactions.(after all they are certified)

In that way you don't have to deal with some kind of broker or adviser who all want a piece of the pie.
Imo if you have a couple of 100k to spend it's time to start thinking about brokers/advisers etc., untill then just do it yourself is my advice. And only put in the money you can really miss ofc.

[delling]

Sounds good! I had no idea I could just open an account with my bank and start immediately.

I guess it depends on the bank, but how do I buy/sell stocks?

I guess there are some banks that even provide cool Web interfaces so I can do it all myself...

[Rucious]

I don't know if you are aware or not but Turkey is also good to invest. Since Turkey chosen the best developed or w/e you call Country in Europe, and many investors are investing their money here. I cannot really say where you should invest because what we(my father) do is investing to Iraq ..so consider Turkey as well.

[Morbid]

Well atleast in Holland you can just open a stock exchange bank account and once you have a account like that you are able to buy/sell stocks through a secured web ui.

So you can do it all from your couch

Looks like you can do it it also it seems.
http://www.bankofscotlandhalifax.co.uk/sharedealing/products/share_dealing_account.asp

Here's a list with online stockbrokers.
http://www.independentinvestor.co.uk/share-dealing/compare-brokers.php

But isn't it just possible to open a stock account at the bank you have your normal account also?