Unlike the day job, investments aren't about "do your work and get paid".
This is about multiple investment instruments available on the market, rigorous selection of the right ones for you, dealing with risks and avoiding scams, and having no guaranteed result of increasing your money at the end of the day.
Criteria Of Choosing The Right Investment Platform In The UK in 2024: eAskme |
But this isn't a "terra incognita" flooded with crocodiles – and we're telling in this article what to choose from and what the market currently offers.
Criteria of selecting the best investment platform UK:
We're all different and have different ideas in our heads about investments.
For example, someone starts thinking about investing when having £500 extra cash on hand, while others might have £250,000,000 to operate with.
However, we're sure that if you're one of the second, you have found great investment options years and decades ago.
This article is for those belonging to the first group and those having from £1,000 to £1 million.
How much money do you have?
This will define whether you want to apply for riskier (and much more profitable) investments or stay within something classic and low-end.
Do you have a plan or vision?
If you'd like to put your money down once and see it grow quarterly or yearly without any extra effort on your side, then most classic low-profit investment tools on the best investment platforms for beginners in the UK will do it for you.
Heck, you could even bring your money to the bank and get from 0.6% to 2% annually.
But if you want to turn, like, £1,000 into £100,000 in 10 years, then you have to resort to something much more volatile and riskier.
What do you want to invest in?
Or – putting it differently – what do you feel comfortable about investing in?
You could feel like buying gold, holding, and selling it isn't for you because of the low income and long time, so you'd be attracted to stock trading.
Alternatively, you might feel like futures and derivatives for oil could bring some dough quick, so you'd be averted from something like fixed-income national bonds.
But, of course, that will all depend on what you are assured of.
What services will you get on a platform?
Not every investment platform is created equal.
This could be a mobile app, flexibility of packages, weekly/daily/hourly market reviews by professionals, various analytical tables with prices and rates, which could auto-refresh anything between a millisecond and an hour, user support via various channels, personal consultant, blog, personalized or general professional advice, on-hand experience, connection to outer databases and professional investment/trading tools…
A list of options is immense, and you have to study each platform to see what's put on the table.
What fees will you pay?
Some fees may eventually drain down your pocket. For instance, equity management companies often take a fixed fee + fluctuating fee (rewards their daily efforts and bonuses for good yearly results).
A platform can utilize the same.
The fees could include a platform fee, account fee, dealer fee, margin fee, wealth increase fee…
To understand, you have to look at such information as TER (Total Expense Ratio), which may be way bigger than the initial sum of money you have on hand.
To find out the TER, carefully read the terms and conditions of the platform, especially a part about fees.
The availability of robotic advice:
This is ultra-crucial for newcomers. It's advice from a robot, which tells what is profitable now so you could invest without the need to spend a zillion hours studying market analytics on your own.
Such robotic advice would typically include profitability information, best investment scenarios and tips, short-term and long-term advice, and approximation of incomes/losses on special deals.
One of the great strategies for an investor could be real estate investing.
Of course, it would require anything above £100,000 to enter the market confidently.
Still, it could bring a significant income – depending on the market you operate on and the type of investments you make.
The highest income would be on growing markets (for instance, in Eastern Europe) for real estate flipping operations, which seldom bring over 100% of income.
That's why property investments are increasingly more often chosen by smart investors in the UK.
Top 5 best online investment platforms in the UK
Now, as you know the criteria of selecting the best investment platform right for you, it's time to consider the top choices of existing platforms in the UK, which all have several advantages:
- recommended by financial and investment professionals
- reliable and proven to be trustworthy o'er the years
- suitable for both beginners and seasoned investors
- they all have robotic advice to a bigger or lesser extent
- What's important, they are not too expensive to run your activity.
Evestor (evestor.co.uk)
Good for robotic advice, low entry points in many deals, ranging from risk levels, various investment instruments, and no sneaky charges.
Vanguard (vanguardinvestor.co.uk)
Best for discount online brokerage and has about 0.41% TER annual.
HSBC (hsbc.co.uk/investments)
A company with the name, which everybody has heard of. Great for diversified investments and super-low entry point for deals, just £100.
Fidelity (fidelity.co.uk)
It has a great ready-made risk-balanced portfolio packed with traditional and mainstream investment funds.
Nutmeg (nutmeg.com)
It has various investment portfolio profiles, personalized offers, and various comprehensible graphs to monitor important data.
If you still have any question, feel free to ask me via comments.
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