Where did you start?

Wanted to start up my shares portfolio... just dont know where to start. Was thinking just to get started in woolworths or BHP, just because they are bigger type companies and for no other reason really. How did the rest of you get started and how did you go about choosing your first shares to make money??

Also wanted to buy into some managed funds, because they seem an easy way to diversify and obviously they are managed by profesinals.

Any thoughts? Where did you all start?

 

My first shares

The first shares I ever bought in my life I bought in March this year. I bought a few AEU, and CWT. Both pay dividends higher than current interest rates and usually quarterly.

Once I worked out how to watch, and buy and file the paperwork, fill out the forms which come to elect where to have dividends deposited, which account I wanted to use for those, which account for buys, how to document it all for tax purposes, then I got bigger amounts of banks and mining bluechip ones.

 

ok i have a heap to learn! might fill that comsec form to get started and just buy something!! Best way to learn is to spend some money, im sure that will peak my attention and intrest

 

Yeah commsec is def your best bet to trade shares.

I recently started myself. When your starting out I think its always best to go for steady blue-chips, to give your portoflio a nice foundation. It then gives you the leverage to expand into bigger things, well at least this is my opinion.

My first buys were CBA and SGB. Mainly because they give good dividend returns, but also because they are good steady growers.

 

We started in the early 1970's wife was a personal assistant to stockbrocker who dealt with lots of speculative mining companies. Some went off like sky rockets - Posieden, Triako - and we also have a suitcase of useless scripts of shares from companies that didn't perform. Wife was finally retrenched when stockbrocker went belly up - left a bad taste in mouth.

Next foray was in NRMA shares given out - sold them.

I work in TAFE at moment and have several teachers who retired when interest rates were 18% - took advise from financial planners (took lump sum instead of pension for rest of their life) - now lump sum gone and they are back as Part Time teachers in their 70's.

Next foray was into real estate - 3 IPs, then Navra Invest Managed funds.

Rgds

Kevinb

 

By the sounds of it, you shouldn't be in menai, you should be in wooloware or sylvania waters...

 

Hi Giulio

Some advise: Spend $179 in Sydney and attend the next course
Navra Financial Services

Or go to Welcome to NavraInvest Limited - Funds Management and download the PDS and check out the savings plan option.

As an example my son put $5k cash into the NavraInvest retail fund 20 months ago with a margin loan of $8k on shares. He contributes $200/month of his money with $300/month also going in with a margin loan.

The fund paid him over $4k last financial year with margin loan interest about $1260 - I think the portfolio package is now over $32k inc margin loan

Rgds

Kevinb

 

Keven you son is doing very well hopefully i can do just as well .

 

I think as long as your in it as an 'investor' and not just trying to make a quick buck, you should do alright.

I'm only starting out myself too, I was thinking of doing something like kevinb's son, where he puts a proportion of money in each month, and the lender throwin in extra loan.

But i'm just going to keep it simple over the next 9 months until I re-finance with a lower rate, and have gotten used to the whole thing.

 

Hey i just started a few weeks ago, on the commsec account. I bought up big last week after the market dive - MBL, RIO, SGB and CTX.

Although they will prob go down again this week im not fussed as the dividends are good and look like strong growth companies. I agree that when starting out it good to diversify with blue chip stocks in banks, mining and even some property securities.

I say master the basics then get into the trading game.

 

“Although they will prob go down again this week im not fussed as the dividends are good and look like strong growth companies. I agree that when starting out it good to diversify with blue chip stocks in banks, mining and even some property securities.

I say master the basics then get into the trading game.”


If you think that you are protected by your div. consider below example.
Say…you bought XYZ at $20 per share. You see it fall to $12. You just lost 40% of your investment. You may think that you are protected by your div. At the div. rate say 3.5% per annum, theoretically you will get your investment back in a little over 11 years.
In reality you’ll never recover because you run into concept such as the real cost of money and opportunity cost. Try not to buy and hold a share because of div. Next time try to buy things on the way up. Anyway…something to think about it.

 

I think what he meant troppo was that they may drop over the comming months, but inevitably they will make about 10-20% pa, as they have done for the past decade or so.

I tend to take dividends into consideration too when buying shares, especially if I plan on holding them for the long term.

But of course, as you said, the main thing you need to concentrate on is the gains, not the dividends.

 

I also look at EPS and what the payout ratio is, compounding return with retained profits may be a better option longterm if they can keep their ROI up.

 

yeh troppo that sounds right, but i guess the dividends just give me a little more confidence about the security's performance

good stuff

 

I just have a few managed funds. Started with 5k about a year and a half ago, I add to it each month and now it is worth about 40k. If you are going to go with managed funds I've found that being able to do things online is important to me. CFS has a good online system as do many others, makes it easy to see the balance, add, remove funds etc.