Stock market dealing

You have to take the long term view or it doesn't work.
When/how you get IN is really important, Dollar cost averaging as it's called: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dollarcostaveraging.asp
is the tradiditional advice, but is rather short-sighted.
We can say now that there's a HIGH probablility that If you buy oil now, it'll dip quite a lot at some point having gone higher. How are you going to find the peak to sell at?
If you're twitchy as hell, you can IME usually get out early enough. If the price drops instantly you're stuffed though.

I was heavily into Korea because of a small number of AI assets there. Then Trump got his willy out and Korea's oil comes from the gulf.
A fund at a fund-holder, such as I was using (Barings Korea) takea a day or so to deal.
Fortunately though, Korea had a national holiday on the critical day, so I guessed the exchange (KOSPI) wouldn' be able to react a lot, so I sold ~2/3rds, at the yellow arrow.

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It dropped like a rock the following day. The drop on the red arrow (actually a bit below ehere marked) lost me about £50k. Ouch. I would have been better off holding, as is often the case, but I sold because I didn't know how much further it was going to go. So any avoidable loss, you can look on as insurance. It could have gone down to 0%. The loss was only what I'd made on that amount of stake, in the last month.

I've rebought at about the green line. I also have some oil. If oil supply is restored, I may lose on the oil but win on Korea. If Korea uses Russian or other oil, those high tech companies in Korea can carry on up. So we'll see.

Craig Revell Horwood would call the red-arrow drop a Disaaaahster dahling, but as I started back at the beginning of the year or before, it's not. That's the longer view.

So I wouldn't buy heavily on oil now, but it could go up some more, or a lot more, but then drop like the proverbial.
Gold has dropped a lot, but the longer trouble carries on, it's likely to rise.
Bitcoin too will be volatile.

Al that volatility is a dogsend to the day trader.
It's simple as pie. Prices behave in the same way as always, most of the time.
The Korea fund price has a very obvious LEVEL at the 33% mark.
So you buy at the 33% level and sell at about 41%, then go short at about 39%, and rebuy that trade at about 34.
Those are conservative levels; 39 is after the drop is confirmed,34 is before the probable max gain is achieved, but it'll do.
I won't always work, but you use stop-losses, and most of the time it'll work.
You lose if you get it wrong and hit the stop-loss, but you win several times that when you get it right.

Remember it's all, when day trading, at 5x, so , say, the drop from 39 to 34 on the chart, is a gain of (1.39/1.34) as a % is 18.6%, every few days.

YOu don't day-trade with OEIC funds, too slow, but they are less volatile.
ETF's are quicker and you can set stop-losses. You can short them, though.
Shares , eg in Samsung and SK Hynix, are quickest to buy/sell and get value, but the most volatile.
You really need 24hr access - and never sleep, natch.

I'm in cash, mostly. but took a punt on Green Energy, and it's done a couple of % in the past 2 weeks.
Elon has just ordered a few sq miles worth of solar panels from Chieeena, and has a new battery plant.. Murricans are triggered on "gas" prices.
 
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Long term yes but not as good as beginning of March to date with capital dropping 10%, don't panic Mr Wainwaring?

If you are inviting for twenty or forty years, you can expect to sail over some peaks and troughs.
 
I'be just had a missive from HSBC, where my wife had put some cash. I sold the lot into Money Market etc funds ticking over almost negligibly at about 6%pa (less their costs). HSBC were telling me that it was better to hold through the dips, in times like this.
Cheeky buggers. I actually sold about where the S is. Trump had gone in, it was supposed to be short, but the peasants were revolting.
I've got too many accounts dotted about so it was a lot easier to park that one.

So, it's gone up a fraction of a percent since
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I wish I'd done the same with the rest. I'm no better off than that, and it's been busy!
Even oil isn't zooming up to $200 any time soon, and when Trump opens his mouth all hell breaks out.
But it's not for long.
After his most recent bit of junk the bots sold instantly and the oil price dipped so everybody bought the rebound ----

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for a quick couple of percent.
Traders often leave "stink bids" hanging , to sell on high spikes or buy on low ones.
 
If you're looking for where to put your annual 20k allowance for a Stocks and Shares Isa, as I have been, there are loads of options.
There are ever more very cheap or free places.
I was thinking of using Interactive Investor where I already have funds, because it's flat fee, not by percentage. So adding further funds is free of a standing platform fee.
There are Free platforms too.
Watch out for
Transaction charges
FX charges
Very slow buying/selling
Funds charges - they can vary with platform for the same fund
Trading hours
Help/messaging facilities
Annual report variations
Big one - range of funds and ETFs available
Ability to do programmed trading
Number of order types
Charting details

and on and on and on.

I don't know about all of the platforms, but I have looked around.
I would exclude
- all banks and bulding societies - poor ranges, high fees
the free platforms - on prejudice and some enquiries; they're likely to have a limited range and still charge you somehow
Trading 212 - no OEIC Funds. (plus, they're sharks)
EToro. I use them. Don't, absolutely don't.
Interactive Investor - I think the fees work out as not cheap, for 20k. Cheap when you get above 90k, iirc
Fidelity, Saxo - expensive.
I've probably missed a couple , but you're down to the traditionally quoted ones: AJ Bell, and Hargreaves Lansdown, both of which I also use.
People moan about fees at HL, but they've reduced, and are better than they were .
The best platform, for being able to know what the heck's going on, compare, and getting help, is HL
AJB has more funds (though HL has enough) and is a little cheaper. It's a dumb platform for letting you know how you're doigm though. YOu'd still need a spreadsheet of your own. You need one for any of them really, but there's no graphing, etc at AJB.

The fees at worst are under about 1% whatever you do (unless you're trading all the time, which I assume you wouldn't be), SO whether it's 0.25% or 0.65%, doesn't make a huge difference if you're getting a better platform.

You wouldn't day-trade stocks in a 20k ISA, you need more funds than that, because you can't use leverage in an isas apart from individual leveraged funds, which can be awkward . Trading 212 works, but with limitations and traps. It's ok if you just want to have a few shares/ ETFs and shift around occasionally. Even without the OEICS.

AJB has the best screener, by far, period. It's free to use, and vital, I'd say. Nobody elses comes close.
( A Screener is where you look to see what has done well over the previous week, month, 3/6/12 months etc)

If you want to trade a lot of shares, OEICS (funds) and ETFs, then look at IG, whose new ISA is pretty much free, they seem to be pushing themselves ahead of some of the rest. 3.x% on uninvested cash, too.
If you're "sophisticated" then there's Interactive Brokers, who do the whole range of trading things, like traded options, but I doubt few here would want that.

There's an intro bonus at IG at the moment, too. I'll be trying them.


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The marlets at the moment are a bit of a lottery. Very Trump dependent. Who knows how long or how big, the war will go.
 
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