Considering dabbling with about 500 quid. A mate of mine does it and has overall made more money than
The banks would have given him but importantly gets loads of enjoyment out of trading
8)
I used to buy the odd share here & there. Did well on some things & not so well on others. Overall made a decent profit. Bought my Nikon D80 + 2 lenses etc. with the profit from one particular share with an initial £500 purchase.
With the commission u pay I reckon £500 is the min u need to speed on one share to make decent gains.
Buy a book, something like The Naked Trader by Robbie Burns ( I think) and get yourself a portfolio set-up online & pick shares & track them for a while ; see how u do.
Don'follow advice in the shares forums or you will end up losing money - lots of people ramping shares etc.
I do a bit. If I were you and just starting out then I'd get something like an iii ISA account and set up a monthly subscription to them for £50 or £100 quid or whatever. You then decide how you want to allocate that each month. You choose to buy your shares on, iirc, one of 3 dates in the month, they bundle everyone's purchases together so commission is low. £1.50 or so. I'd set up to put a third each month into a nice high divi paying oil stock BP or Shell (set up for autoreinvest of divi) , a third into something like Tesco and a third into a speculative stock. I like Arm holdings but valuation is getting a bit rich. This gives benefit of pound cost averaging and gives you some skin in the game so you can see if it's for you
Motley fool had a book that was worth reading plus this
http://www.fool.co.uk/Investing/guides/The-Best-Books-On-Investing.aspx