So after several weeks of reading, watching, listening and deep, deep learning I finally took my first steps into the world of stock investing.
It has been super interesting with so much to investigate, so many rabbit holes to explore and so many treasures troves of useful information to discover.
I'm now all in and look forward to the journey ahead.
Setting up the Trading 212 account
I opted for the Stocks & Shares ISA account option with Trading 212.
ISAs are great incentive from the UK Government to encourage the public to invest.
You can put up to £20,000 ($27,400) each tax year into an ISA and all gains are totally free of tax.
Setting up the account with Trading 212 was not too difficult, a few trip-ups with the identity verification but the whole process was completed in about 20 minutes.
The trading interface for Trading 212 is a bit spartan, but trades are free so you can't expect too much luxury.
You can send up to £2,000 ($2,740) into the account instantly using a debit card without any charge. Beyond that there is a fee of 0.7%.
Alternatively you can link your bank account directly, or you can manually send in bank transfers.
I opted for the manual transfers but that does seem to take up to a day to arrive. That might though be my bank account.
So far I have made a handful of trades without any problems, and the dashboard provides just about all the information I need.
Doing the Research
I have taken heed of the advice from many of the YouTube investment pundits and been doing my research before leaping into buying any stocks.
This research really has been the most fun.
As I plan to have a 'Green New World' slant to my investments I have kicked off in the area of Electric Vehicles.
But EVs don't stop and start with Tesla, Nio and Workhorse.
There is so much more to this - starting from the ground up with mining.
EV batteries need lithium and nickel particularly - and they are going to need a lot of both to meet future projected sales.
Mining generally really drills into global geo-politics.
Nickel is especially interesting. I will be doing a separate deep-dive post on this as there is so much to consider.
To learn about what is going on in the world of mining I have been getting well into sources like Mining.com, Mining-Technology.com and NSEnergyBusiness.com.
To be on top of the game, research is definitely a 24/7 occupation. Just this evening a report came out on nickel demand...
I am going to be hitting the Nickel miner stocks in the morning !
As well as the obvious sources such as Yahoo Finance, I have found a few gems for general research like Simply Wall St...
I have found this very useful for looking under the hood before buying stocks in a company.
There are a whole range of other sources I am finding for particular areas of research such as SPACs (Special Purpose Acquisition Companies). I have even been digging into the SEC !
What Stocks have I bought so far
I hadn't planned to get into SPACs straight out of the gate as they are rather too speculative - but I just couldn't resist the temptation and took a couple of small positions.
My first buy was Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp (NYSE : NGA) - this is a SPAC that is going to merge with Lion Electric, a small Canada-based maker of electric trucks and buses. I was late to party on this so it is definitely a long play rather than a quick gainer.
My second stock was Alussa Energy Acquisition Corp (NYSE : ALUS). This was a product of my research and I got in much earlier on this. Alussa Energy is looking to merge with Freyr, a new EV battery maker in Norway. It has plans to become a big part of the European EV battery supply chain so I have good hopes for this one.
By this point I had dipped my toes in the water and was looking to start with some 'grown up' stocks.
Nickel mining was already on my radar so I jumped in with a small buy of Vale. This company is Brazil based but has a plant in south Wales so there is a bit of local buy on this one.
By Friday I had made my first three stock purchases and I was up about £50 ($68) so I was feeling pretty proud of myself.
As a reward I decided to buy a Tesla !
Well one Tesla share at least. It will take some long time before I can afford a real one.
I have totally enjoyed my first week as a stock investor.
Future gazing and geopolitics are two of my absolute favourite areas of investigation so the research side of stock investing is right up my street.
There is still truck loads to learn though but I am sponging it up.
I don't think 2021 is going to be a boom year for stocks like 2020 turned out to be - but I am in this for the long haul.
It's a journey I am looking forward to.
Please note, I am not a financial expert and this is not financial advice. Do your own research and seek professional advice if needed.
[ image from pixabay.com ]
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I've recently dove back into the stocks myself and setup a few orders for this week for a couple of mining stocks. The precious metals will be one of the leading sectors in the coming years and there are a good number of stocks to choose from.
Mining is definitely an interesting area. Whichever company gets the big nickel contract from Tesla will definitely fly high !
This is awesome! Good for you @pennsif. I wish you all the best in your new endeavour!! Great post!! You're an awesome blogger.
Thank you.
I love learning new stuff - and there is definitely much to learn!
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Interesting read! I dabbeled with stocks and shares isa's .I don't really know what I am doing half the time. But someone told me to invest in Global Trackers - Might be worth looking into them as well.
Yes trackers are on the radar.
I do enjoy learning about the different companies too. My plan is to gradually build up a portfolio of maybe 30 small investments to spread the risk.
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Hi @pennsif, a really interesting post. I joined trading 212 and tried the training version before deciding that I should stick to a fund. I use the Fidelity platform which is so easy and I have invested in Bailie Gifford funds, which are heavily invested in Tesla and doing very well 😉
I might well use some funds as well - but I am enjoying the challenge of picking individual companies at present 😀
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I personally stayed clear of Tesla, there's no reason for the price to be that high.
I'm being hopeful and investing in UK businesses like gyms and bars.
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I must admit Tesla is a bit of a 'trophy stock'.
Gyms and bars could be a good move if the vaccine revives leisure activity. Are there any obvious big players in the UK worth looking at?
I've only been investing for a few years now, but I think it's important to tell newcomers that we are currently in a bull market where pretty much anybody can see a 20-30% return fairly easily. It's common to become overconfident during a bull market and begin to invest more and more... nobody can predict when the market takes a negative hit with 100% accuracy, but history dictates that a massive blow to the market will occur at some point in the future. Only invest what you can afford to lose, and watch out for warning signs (war, disease, tariffs, disasters, etc.) of the market taking a hit due to external factors. Also don't forget to take your profits, after all you only actually make money when you pull out.
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Wise advice all round. Thank you.
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Tesla is an interesting buy. I have exactly one share after the split which is in my sons (2 years old) portfolio and will remain there. I buy shares for him and leave them there as he needs to decide when he is old enough about them. Same with his crypto portfolio.
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That sounds like a good plan.
Do you have any theme to which stocks you buy for him? Or just whatever you like the look of?
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I have a list that needs to fit:
Some examples: McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Daikin.
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Looks like a solid set of criteria.
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Tesla is honestly the only stock that I own. The price could be overpriced at the moment, but if you look at them as a long-term growth stock, I don't think they have any peers. The list of accomplishments of the company is already staggering and the different industries and products they've set their sights on over the next decade is, honestly, incredible.
It will be interesting to see if today's Bitcoin buying affects the stock price much.
It is definitely an expensive stock but it does have a strong market position at the moment.
Yeah, it's hard to tell... it seems to have mainly bounced around the range it was already in. I have to imagine that since around 7% of their cash reserves are now in Bitcoin then if/when other companies start to put their own cash reserves into the Bitcoin ecosystem then Tesla's "cash" position will look stronger and the market will value their shares more. There are estimates that they've currently made half a billion in the BTC price rise since the time (people are guessing) they bought in.
Pretty good quick return on their BTC investment !
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The only thing is that they need to get profitable on making and selling cars, which at the moment is causing the company a big minus. :)
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I completely, absolutely, totally disagree.
Think about all the other auto manufacturers... they're not super profitable selling cars. Most essentially sell at cost, or, like Ford, below cost. Traditional auto makers make their money from financing auto loans and through spare parts.
You have to think of Tesla as an entire ecosystem. The cars are just one small part of that ecosystem. Concentrating on just the cars for Tesla is just like concentrating on just the sale of books for Amazon.
Well, this might be wrong as Ford makes roughly $1100 profit on a sold car.
Tesla sold $1,2 billion in green certificates and reported a $0,7 billion profit. So the car business without the green certificates is still at $-0,5 billion anualy.
I did not say that is not a good business model, as it is. I said it is overpriced by any means as a share if we look at it as it has a marketcap with all others combined. Where the others have also electric cars or even hydrogen powered. I look at the industry as a whole, being involved in my job with most OEMs, Tesla included.
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Oh. Maybe I've made a mistake, but I thought that Ford was making a loss on each vehicle because their costs were greater than their income in 2020. I was looking at their Financial reports that they submitted to the SEC. Totally appreciate that I might have misconstrued that, I'm not great at translating these reports into actual information.
I just don't think you can compare Tesla's marketcap to the other OEMs, because it's nothing like the other OEMs. Looking at its assets and vehicle sales, sure, but when you take into account the incredible amount of data they collect for autopilot, their IP, their projected growth (gigafactories) over the next few years, their expertise in the autopilot microchips, their investments in the machines that make the machines, it's kind of impossible to get an accurate price on what the shares should be at the moment. I personally think they're underpriced and will grow a lot more, but I'm not the market.
This is a sound statement. But the others are not sleeping. I live in the BMW town (Munich) and the highway has been adapted till the Audi town (Ingolstadt) for self driving cars. On most of it, there is no speed limit and it is full of calibration points and data spots. It is interesting to see a 7 series blowing with 220kmh on the tarmac with the driver with the hands on the laptop.
The Google car project has the most advantage here, as they have the most data from Google Maps and Waze and they've partnered with most OEMs for their cars.
The world is changing fast, that is for sure and the transportation market will look different in 10 years from now and yes in 10 years Tesla might be no.1.
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Thanks!!
That's super interesting... I had no idea that any area was adapting their highways for self-driving cars. That's awesome!
I'd actually argue that Tesla has 10x more data than Google at this point. Google obviously has Google Maps and Waze, but Tesla has all the recorded data from all their cars currently using autopilot. I think they hit a billion miles of data a few months ago. Completely agree with you though, the world is changing so fast and I have no idea how things will look in 10 years. Maybe decentralized autonomous companies will be making all the money and the companies we know today barely exist? Who knows?
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Welcome to the show. Happy hunting, m'friend!
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Thank you
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Wow this really amazing, I love learning new stuff