Made £40.23

STOCKS AND SHARES

Anita Sharma, 54, an airline group sales executive, lives in Crawley. WHAT SHE DID

First-time investor Anita jumped at the chance to plough her £100 into stocks and shares. ‘Investing is something I’d wanted to do for some time but

I’d never had the confidence to get started,’ she said. ‘This was the nudge I needed to test the waters.’

She started by looking into stocks and shares ISAS provided by automated investment platforms but decided in the end to use a broker to buy shares in companies directly: ‘I didn’t like the idea of putting money into an ISA and just leaving it there. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to educate myself about how investment works, to look at the performance of sectors and individual companies in the papers, on TV or online and to learn what the jargon that surrounds investment means.’ She checked her investments monthly, selling shares when she’d made a profit she was happy with, and reinvesting it in other companies.

HOW MUCH SHE MADE £40.23.

WHAT SHE LEARNED ‘If you’ve never invested before, starting out is daunting but the key is to do your research. You don’t have to go crazy and invest huge sums of money straight away. Investing a small amount at first helps you to get a feel for it,’ Anita notes. She plans to continue investing and hopes to be able to devote more time to it in the future, particularly when she retires. WHAT THE EXPERT SAYS Sarah Coles of Hargreaves Lansdown observed that being given £100 for this challenge gave Anita the green light to experiment with higher-risk, shorter-term investment. When it comes to investing our own money, though, we’re understandably more likely to err on the side of caution. ‘Your first step in investing is to decide what you’re trying to achieve,’ she says. ‘Are you interested in the rollercoaster of riskier short-term trading, or do you want to build a balanced portfolio and aim for more gradual growth? The first is likely to mean big gains and losses, while the second is a “get rich slow” strategy.’

Investing for five to 10 years or more means your investments should ride out short-term ups and downs, which helps lessen risk, as will investing in funds that spread your money over a large number of shares, alongside other types of investments such as bonds and gold. Coles also says that a stocks and shares ISA will protect your investments and any gains or income they produce from tax.

‘If you use an ISA offered by an investment platform, you can buy and sell shares or funds as often as you like within the ISA wrapper, without losing this protection,’ Coles adds.

Investing a small amount at first helps you get a feel for it