Home > Sample Finance Papers > How to establish a share portfolio

How to establish a share portfolio

April 30th, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments

Before you can buy shares in a company you must first understand what they are and how they work. When you buy shares in a company, you are doing exactly that, purchasing your very own part in a business, even though its only a small part, the results can be rewarding. When the business makes a profit, it reflects in the share price and you make a profit as well.

Managed funds are on offer for people who are not entirely certain about going head down into the share market as in individual. Managed funds are offered by a number of stock broking companies in a wide array of values, starting at $1,000 and going right up into the hundreds of thousands.
Managed funds give the investor the opportunity to take advantage of the benefits in the stock market, without all the hassle of knowing what to buy or sell, and when to do it.

Of course this kind of luxury comes at a price, there are a few upfront fees to be paid, but generally beginners are treated pretty well. A lot of brokers are offering some kind of security attached to their managed funds, something along the lines of, increase your profit by 25 percent in the 1st 5 years or get your money back.

As is often the case, this is the best way to go for quite a number of people with a little extra cash around, and looking to put it to good use. All that is needed to do by you is have the cash up front, detail how much you want to spend, and if you have any particular companies you wish to invest a percentage of your money in. Stockbrokers are highly trained professionals with great skills in summarising where to invest your money to insure you are happily rewarded.

The most preferred types of shares investors purchase are those know as blue ribbon stocks, these are shares in well-maintained companies that have been established for many years and have a good reliable rate of return. These types of businesses are usually banks, insurance companies, and oils and mining stocks.

If you decide to skip the managed fund idea and think you are ready to take on the share market and create your every own portfolio, made up of a number of shares that you think will yield positive results there is a lot of hard work involved.

Firstly it’s not just a matter of jumping in and buying a bunch of shares in a company you saw on TV yesterday. Effective investing requires hours and hours of studying the market, knowing what fields the companies that interest you operate in, and if there is a high demand in that field. Monitoring the performance, watching the share price and researching how often the company pays fully franked dividends will all have a huge impact on how well you do as an investor.

It is always wise to spread your investments out, don’t put all your eggs in one basket they say, so once you have been watching the market for a while, and have your eye on a few companies that seem to be constantly returning good results in a wide range of areas then its time to consider purchasing your shares.

There are a number of strategies floating around in relation to when is the best time to begin investing. What you don’t want to do, is buy shares in a umbrella company right in the peak of a wet season, when only 6 months down the track there is a 12 month drought being predicted. Its likely that you would have purchased your shares when they are right up at the top price, and basically from the day you invest, you watch your money float away as the demand for umbrellas goes down, so does the share price.

The aim is to closely watch the price, and buy it on the way back up, after it has hit rock bottom. A general rule of thumb is as follows: a share in a particular company is worth $10, within a month it goes down to $8, then rises to $8.80 over the next week.

This is a 10% increase on the rock bottom price and the hope is, that once the price rises that initial 10% it’s a fair indication that it will keep rising up.

Once you have got everything set out, a few grands worth of shares tied up in some proven to be successful companies you will want to have some sort of way to keep an eye on your investment. One idea is to create an online watch list, available free from a number of stock broking websites. These are a good way to go as they do all the calculations for you, simply enter the number of shares you own in any company and what you paid for them, then the computer does the rest, gets the most recent price off the internet and calculates how much you have made or lost on each share.

For those less technologically advanced you could revert to any of the good newspapers containing finance sections, they include a complete listing of Australian shares at least 3 days a week with a hive of information about the daily performance of the stocks like their daily high and low, the opening and closing price and how many shares were shifted in the days trading.

One last way to observe the actions is on the finance channels available on pay TV, these provide a non stop slide of every share in the Australian market and its live price from the opening of trading, until 15 minutes after the market closes. The added bonus of using this resource to monitor your portfolio is that not only are you receiving live, real time prices, but you can listen to interviews with some of the markets most knowledgeable people, and hear their predictions for certain aspects of the market, and their opinions on what to buy or sell.

  1. No comments yet.
  1. No trackbacks yet.