Easy Equities and general share trading

FapCop

FapCop

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I just signed up with EasyEquities and holy crap, the things I had to submit made me VERY paranoid of identity theft. Anyfart, they seem legit, so I'm ploughing ahead.

The whole reason behind this is a form of saving money for a future business startup.

I'm certain there's a few of you here that's been buying shares and I'm hoping the veterans among you can help out with a few do's and don'ts when it comes to buying/selling shares. Advice on handling yourself on EE would be great too.
 
If you plan on investing on a regular basis, I recommend joining their Thrive program. It goes without saying that the benefits you get with that are limited to the supported stocks and ETF's in that program, so if you have no interest in those, nevermind :D

Investing is a very personal thing. Everyone will have their own way of doing things and why. Some things that are my own sort of guide:

* Keep costs as low as possible, to a degree anyway.
* Don't buy high and sell low
* Understand that for most of us, investing isn't a get rich quick scheme
* People warn of a bubble. If you have time on your side, you shouldn't worry. If one hits, I leave my money where it is, and things should recover.
* ETF's / passive investing is cool.
* My 1% rule. This I have unfortunately broken early on - but my thoughts here is to not invest more than 1% of my portfolio in one particular stock. Early on I made some bad, and some good decisions, so it's a mission to get this lined up properly. I am trying to invest more in the others rather than selling the overweight ones.
* Don't invest money you plan to use soon.
* Don't invest in something you don't understand. A small part of my investment plan is to invest in companies / brands that benefit me / I strongly believe in. For example, Checkers (because of ebucks). It's quite easy to know what they do. When it comes to ETF's though, I highly recommend reading the MDD (minimum disclosure document) and taking a look at the list of constituents before taking the plunge.
* Avoid overlap. This is something else I have a problem with because of my early days. It doesn't really make sense to have many Naspers shares and a ton of money in SATRIX 40, for example - as a large portion of SATRIX 40 is Naspers.

It would be easier helping you if you had questions.
 
If you are planning on investing in individual shares, I would recommend that you read up on value investing - looking to purchase shares in good companies that are undervalued by the market and selling them when they are overvalued.

The book The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (who was basically Warren Buffet's mentor) is the original text on Value Investing and well worth reading. I also purchased this Udemy Course which has some good practical information to apply value investing in practice.

To me, Easyequities is a great platform for a value investor and AFAIK the only one in South Africa that makes sense if you are investing small amounts (as I am but the low fees would also be attractive to someone with deeper pockets!)

Obviously no investing approach is risk free. One thing I will say is the situations where I have paid school fees is when I have made an impulse or emotional decision to buy or sell rather than doing my homework.
 
InvisibleJim said:
If you are planning on investing in individual shares, I would recommend that you read up on value investing - looking to purchase shares in good companies that are undervalued by the market and selling them when they are overvalued.

The book The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (who was basically Warren Buffet's mentor) is the original text on Value Investing and well worth reading. I also purchased this Udemy Course which has some good practical information to apply value investing in practice.

To me, Easyequities is a great platform for a value investor and AFAIK the only one in South Africa that makes sense if you are investing small amounts (as I am but the low fees would also be attractive to someone with deeper pockets!)

Obviously no investing approach is risk free. One thing I will say is the situations where I have paid school fees is when I have made an impulse or emotional decision to buy or sell rather than doing my homework.
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Couldn't have said it any better.

Also, take your own risk profile into account. If this is "spare" money then you can be a bit more risky, within reason.

I've used Easyequities for about 2 years now, I haven't had any issues except once where I deposited money and they took a bit long to allocate it to my account, but they sorted the issue out as soon as I reached out to them.
 
A good start would be understanding the difference between trading and investing.

You ultimately want to do the latter it you have long term goals and reasonable sensibilities.

Generally ETF’s rather than direct shares are the safer less risky choices.
 
For more info, I aim to buy and leave. I dont plan on selling anything until I'm ready to cash out everything one shot when I'm ready to start my business.

Thank you for the advice so far. As sauron said, what I'm doing more in line with investing.
 
Arksun said:
For more info, I aim to buy and leave. I dont plan on selling anything until I'm ready to cash out everything one shot when I'm ready to start my business.

Thank you for the advice so far. As sauron said, what I'm doing more in line with investing.
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One of the things I have found is that the decision to sell is, in a sense, harder than the decision to buy. Bear in mind also that the time at which you are ready to start your business, some or all of your stocks may be trading at a price lower than what you paid for them or at a marginal profit.

Selling should happen when a stock meets a set selling criteria. Ideally this would be based on the calculated value of the stock being less than the current stock price - for this you need a means of calculating the actual value of the stock. You would also take into account in some way the return you would receive were you to sell.

Buy stock at a discount, sell at a premium, re-invest in another discounted stock. repeat. Sounds simple doesn't it :)
 
I stopped trading shares years ago, especially when GT247 introduced derivative instruments with no expiry dates, now I just trade derivatives.
 
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