Malcolm Stacey - Share Attack: 80 Great Tips to Survive and Thrive as a Trader

Share Attack

80 great tips
to survive and thrive
as a trader

Malcolm Stacey

HARRIMAN HOUSE LTD

18 College Street

Petersfield

Hampshire

GU31 4AD

GREAT BRITAIN

Tel: +44 (0)1730 233870

Email: contact@harriman-house.com

Website: www.harriman-house.com

First published in Great Britain in 2015

Copyright Malcolm Stacey

The right of Malcolm Stacey to be identified as the Author has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Paperback ISBN: 9780857194190

eBook ISBN: 9780857194961

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publisher. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior written consent of the Publisher.

No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person or corporate body acting or refraining to act as a result of reading material in this book can be accepted by the Publisher, by the Author, or by the Employer of the Author.

For Jo, Eleri, Robin
and Jack

Contents

Disclaimer

This book is intended for those interested in trading in the stock market. You should be aware that shares can go up or down in value. You may not get back what you put in.

Not everyone succeeds with shares and no one can promise to make you successful. The author and the publisher accept no legal responsibilities for the contents of this work.

This is not a definitive exposition of share trading. You are strongly advised to seek professional advice before trading. Conditions in financial markets forever fluctuate and evolve, and what worked in the past is not guaranteed to work in the future.

About the Author

Malcolm Stacey was for 30 years among the BBCs most experienced investigative reporters, specialising in business. He produced and reported for Roger Cooks Checkpoint and You and Yours . After reinventing himself as a private share trader, he has written two previous books on making big money from shares. He has continued to follow his own tips and hints, gleaned from some of the top financial minds in the country including well-known City luminaries he met in the course of making 8,000 television and radio programmes.

Malcolm is also an experienced tutor, having presented BBC Schools TV and worked with the Broadcasting Corporations training department.

Preface

Many books about shares pursue just one system, one strategy, one method. There may be variations to the grand plan, but it is still only a single methodology.

Relax. You wont be burdened with following a single master blueprint in this book. I dont think thats the best way, because if you follow just one method, you wont have the opportunity to pick n mix from hundreds of other brilliant wheezes.

While working in financial investigative departments of the BBC, I chatted to hundreds of politicians, tycoons and entrepreneurs with experience and influence in the financial world. From them I collected a cornucopia of imaginative ways to win with shares.

Since leaving the corporation to make a new career as an armchair share trader, I have test-driven many of these tips, seeking to find out which of them are the most successful. Many are included in this book for the first time. I also include a number of my earlier ideas, which have been brought bang up to date. Within these pages youll find a number of potent ways to milk the share market. Putting them together could make you rich.

Whether youre a complete beginner or already an experienced trader, youll find hundreds of useful tricks and techniques. Youll also hopefully be entertained along the way, as I share some humorous anecdotes from down the years.

This book is divided into two main parts. In the first, I will put you in the right frame of mind to trade shares successfully. Ill then move on to reveal 60 of my favourite systems for making big money from shares. Youll learn what to do and when to do it. And more importantly how to avoid costly mistakes.

Your thrilling journey to trading success begins here.

Introduction

G o on. You know you want to. So just admit it.

Youd love to make loads more money buying and selling shares. If you already own a few shares, you yearn to hold more. And if you already trade shares, youd like to chuck in the day job and trade full-time.

You ache to hold a phone in each hand at parties and shout into one Sell Black Stuff Oil! and yell into the other Buy Ice Cream Holdings! Then turn to fellow guests and casually announce: Ive just made five thousand pounds.

You crave a halt to the dreary commute to work. Youd rather slob around the house in old clothes. You want to break off from a bit of light trading now and then to swing in a hammock, smell the honeysuckle, study Proust, learn Walloon, or watch more telly.

You need to be rid of the boss on your back, the boredom of being nice to colleagues you dont like, the clock-watching and the stressful avoidance of work. Above all, you hanker after real wealth. To be well and truly rolling in it.

Freedom to go your own way and plenty of legal tender to do it with. How does that sound? Marvellous? Enchanting? Ravishing?

But is it that easy? Yes!

Ive been trading shares since my blind date with Boadicea. And I can tell you that being old isnt much fun. For some bizarre reason God plucks hair from our heads and sticks it in our ears. Still, longevity has a great advantage in the golden game of share trading. Its called experience.

When I first took an interest in shares it was the eighties, and you couldnt trade except through a broker. And this stuffy bunch wouldnt even look at you unless you were already rich. Furthermore, they usually chose the bunnies you invested in. And you couldnt really dig in and out of the markets anyway, because long phone calls and longer expenses were involved.

Then in October 1986 Big Bang came to the City. From that point anyone could dabble in shares in his or her own right. Thats when I began buying shares. I have not let my old peepers stray off the markets since.

So unlike most writers on shares, I have hangar-loads of hard-knock, bashed-on-the-head, climbing the walls experience. Ill share it all with you in this book.

Journey to the Centre of the Earths Wealth

Why you should shift shares

Y ou dont believe trading shares can make you rich? That only happens in trashy novels? No.

Do you know how many share trades are made in the world? The answer is a mind-wrenching two million every second! Thomson Reuters, the financial information people, tells us that ten years ago it was only 20,000 trades a second. So share trading is becoming more popular all the time. If it were not profitable, would this massive gold rush continue?