Terms used:
Fund - is usually either an
ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) which is simply a bunch of shares, all related usually. They behave much like single shares
OR an
OEIC like Jupiter India, Legal and General Emerging Markets, Aberdeen USA small co shares, Schroder's Financial opportunities
You don't know exactly what stocks it holds or how it plays with Options etc to keep the value up, but the return can be much higher than a straight bunch of shares. One reason for that is that if the shares in the funds start dropping, the fund-holder can "short" them and gain some value. They are "managed". Usually they're just called Funds
Instrument is anything you can buy or sell.
Stock, usually just means shares
Shares bits of companies.
Name a shorthand for Instrument
Bond is rather loose, Often only gets its gain from lending money, so not company related, Can be a hybrid.
Stop loss.
If the price is 100, you can in theory set a stop loss at 95 so if the price drops 5%, it sells for you.
With Trading 212 it'll sell at 95 without the price on the chart getting near 95
Trailing Stop Loss
If the price is going up say 1% a day, you can set a TS which hangs say 2% under the price. It ratchets up, it doesn't go down. So the price has 2% of "wiggle room", but if it falls by more than 2% from the highest it's been to, it sells.
If you set the distance (the 2%) too tight, it'll stop you out earlier than you wanted.
Take Profit
If the price is 99-101 all the time, you can put a TP at 105 to catch a spike up to grab a lucky profit.
Apart from some shares I'm all out at the moment, the market's high and being an old git I'm not supposed to be holding risk in case something dramatic happens and it takes a long time to recover.
Like a Tworld Twar.
Someone has just had a go at shooting Trump.
It sounds like they didn't get very near him, but something like that could cause an implosion. Nothing is logical.
If there IS a big kwadoonk ( technical term for a collapse...) a Global fund will drop like a rock too.
You cannot use stop-losses on some funds at all, such as the ones called OEICS.
You CAN use Stop losses on ETFs, but not on all platforms
On shares AND ETFs, on some platforms you can't use a Stop-Loss at the same time as a Take Profit (sell when the price rises to your level)
eToro you can ,Trading 212 you can't, in the Invest or Isa platform.
That's a killer for me, I want TP's as well as Stop Losses.. Quite often the price of an ETF will spike upwards, possibly by 5% or even 10%, and you can catch it when it does that. If you only have a stop loss, then you can only guarantee a loss, if you see what I mean.
Also, some platforms have better sorts of stop losses which protect you a little bit , or a lot, depending on type, against a quick, artificial narrow spike downwards (illegal manipulation which happens all the b..... time ) , "stopping you out" at a loss.
SO I won't be using Trading 212 more. IG has those better Stop-Losses, a good uninvested cash interest, and they appear to have removed most or all costs.
Trading 212 is run from Bulgaria. As I've said before, the way they get their prices and display them, is basically legal fraud. Reprehensible. Robinhood does the same. When you challenge their HELP people about it, they deflect, obfuscate, and lie through their teeth.
Something else really useful which Trading 212 doesn't have in the Invest accounts, is Trailing Stops.
eToro has those as well. (But their site annoys me and their fees built into spreads, are appaling!)
So NO, i wouldn't recommend a Global fund at Trading212.
If you're putting 5k in, and you use IG, you can use shares in 5 companies , and use trailing stop losses.
I'd buy a stock which is rising from some sort of dip, and when it has risen enough that you can get the stoploss over your starting price, you can't lose, so let it run.
You could pick a Memory stock like Micron, up 519% in the last 12 months, Arcadian Asset management, up 151% in the last 12 months, etc etc, Use a screener and pick 5, preferably in different areas. You could use a broad ETF llike Asia Pacific , up 70% in the last year, , or Dell (computers, data centre hardware) up 127% last year. Erasca, 1610% in the last 12 months, 14% in the last week.
Look at the charts, use wot I sed about trends and pull backs, only buy them when they're rising from a dip, & have a look at those Moving Averages I pointed out.
If you find about 8 contenders, you can set Alerts on your phone. If one you have has reached a High and is starting to go flat (look at different timeframes) get out and find something rising after a pull back.
You CAN use some of the better STOPS on the T212 CFD platform, but they charge you credit card rates, as peviously explained. IG is much cheaper. Pepperstone even less.
Trading 212 also has the most infuriating charts. You can't use multiple screens (like 2) properly, and NONE of the things you want to set and keep using, "stick". So you have to make the scale text size big enough to read, EVERY time you go to a chart. Day-break markers don't stick either, If you draw a trend-line or Levels on a chart, neither do those.
I once grilled their Chat people about the non-sticking text size. They lied - they said it was ok their end, and they wanted never-ending screen shots and videos. They know perfectly well it doesn't work properly. It's because they're using Tradingview's charts but only the very cheap version. They basically want to tire you out so you stop asking so you go away. The platform is not resident on yor PC, it's in the cloud, so it's the same for everyone.
Back to the stocks (or ETFs)
You only need 1.4% a week to double your money in a year. Piece of Wazz.
You can afford to be in CASH so you're ready to buy, don't bother using a "safe" fund (which will pay you about 0.02% per day) because the money is tied up. If they pay interest on uninvested cash like most do, it helps a teeny bit but so small it's irrelevant.
Note that on most platforms, it takes a day to get your money when you sell a share, or ~2 days when you sell an ETF. Trading 212 wins there, it's almost instant.
