So after several weeks of reading, watching, listening and deep, deep learning I finally took my first steps into the world of stock investing.
It has been super interesting with so much to investigate, so many rabbit holes to explore and so many treasures troves of useful information to discover.
I'm now all in and look forward to the journey ahead.
Setting up the Trading 212 account
I opted for the Stocks & Shares ISA account option with Trading 212.
ISAs are great incentive from the UK Government to encourage the public to invest.
You can put up to £20,000 ($27,400) each tax year into an ISA and all gains are totally free of tax.
Setting up the account with Trading 212 was not too difficult, a few trip-ups with the identity verification but the whole process was completed in about 20 minutes.
The trading interface for Trading 212 is a bit spartan, but trades are free so you can't expect too much luxury.
You can send up to £2,000 ($2,740) into the account instantly using a debit card without any charge. Beyond that there is a fee of 0.7%.
Alternatively you can link your bank account directly, or you can manually send in bank transfers.
I opted for the manual transfers but that does seem to take up to a day to arrive. That might though be my bank account.
So far I have made a handful of trades without any problems, and the dashboard provides just about all the information I need.
Doing the Research
I have taken heed of the advice from many of the YouTube investment pundits and been doing my research before leaping into buying any stocks.
This research really has been the most fun.
As I plan to have a 'Green New World' slant to my investments I have kicked off in the area of Electric Vehicles.
But EVs don't stop and start with Tesla, Nio and Workhorse.
There is so much more to this - starting from the ground up with mining.
EV batteries need lithium and nickel particularly - and they are going to need a lot of both to meet future projected sales.
Mining generally really drills into global geo-politics.
Nickel is especially interesting. I will be doing a separate deep-dive post on this as there is so much to consider.
To learn about what is going on in the world of mining I have been getting well into sources like Mining.com, Mining-Technology.com and NSEnergyBusiness.com.
To be on top of the game, research is definitely a 24/7 occupation. Just this evening a report came out on nickel demand...
I am going to be hitting the Nickel miner stocks in the morning !
As well as the obvious sources such as Yahoo Finance, I have found a few gems for general research like Simply Wall St...
I have found this very useful for looking under the hood before buying stocks in a company.
There are a whole range of other sources I am finding for particular areas of research such as SPACs (Special Purpose Acquisition Companies). I have even been digging into the SEC !
What Stocks have I bought so far
I hadn't planned to get into SPACs straight out of the gate as they are rather too speculative - but I just couldn't resist the temptation and took a couple of small positions.
My first buy was Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp (NYSE : NGA) - this is a SPAC that is going to merge with Lion Electric, a small Canada-based maker of electric trucks and buses. I was late to party on this so it is definitely a long play rather than a quick gainer.
My second stock was Alussa Energy Acquisition Corp (NYSE : ALUS). This was a product of my research and I got in much earlier on this. Alussa Energy is looking to merge with Freyr, a new EV battery maker in Norway. It has plans to become a big part of the European EV battery supply chain so I have good hopes for this one.
By this point I had dipped my toes in the water and was looking to start with some 'grown up' stocks.
Nickel mining was already on my radar so I jumped in with a small buy of Vale. This company is Brazil based but has a plant in south Wales so there is a bit of local buy on this one.
By Friday I had made my first three stock purchases and I was up about £50 ($68) so I was feeling pretty proud of myself.
As a reward I decided to buy a Tesla !
Well one Tesla share at least. It will take some long time before I can afford a real one.
I have totally enjoyed my first week as a stock investor.
Future gazing and geopolitics are two of my absolute favourite areas of investigation so the research side of stock investing is right up my street.
There is still truck loads to learn though but I am sponging it up.
I don't think 2021 is going to be a boom year for stocks like 2020 turned out to be - but I am in this for the long haul.
It's a journey I am looking forward to.
Please note, I am not a financial expert and this is not financial advice. Do your own research and seek professional advice if needed.
[ image from pixabay.com ]