Investing is difficult, I mean I’ve heard that a tossing a coin can be more predictable at picking good stocks than investors (seeing as I’m not a professional investor, perhaps I should just use a 2p to make my decision choices for me). But how am I picking my stocks at the moment… Well here goes – a lot of these might be unfounded, but I’ll run through though them anyway.
Lets start by looking at my ‘core’ shares.
With these shares I ‘ride’ the waves. Buy when they’ve got an established low, sell when they’re high, but I always keep some in my portfolio.
BP (sym: BP.). Why have I chosen this one? Because _everyone_ knows it’s going up. I mean – we know they had issues with the oil pipeline, and with the photoshopping pictures and the bad PR and costs that followed, but these stocks are *incredibly* underpriced. I’ve already made most of my losses from my ‘mistakes’ earlier on with my trading, and they’ve still got points to travel.
HSBC Holdings (sym: HSBA). Not sure why I chose this one – but considering they’re a bank, and they’re still in business, it cant be a bad bet. Saying that, now I’ve started writing this article, I think I’ll sell them!
My real money makers
Now, big companies like BP and HSBC aren’t going to double in value overnight (or even go up 10% overnight).
So I created a screener. Every stock portfolio site has a screening tool, but I enjoy using FT.com’s screener as its simple to use, and offers links direct to IC recommended companies. Its not quite as advanced as writing your own using a platform like IT Charts, but it still a start.
Seeing as its late, and I’d like to get this post up, I’m going to stop here and talk more about my screener(s) in my next post on stock trading, and then I’ll talk about my big money makers, and who / what I use to trade them in such low quantities.