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The electronic shares portfolio
Having gone through the registration process to
buy and sell shares on-line with one of the now well-established
websites (I use
www.iii.co.uk), it is possible to set up your own
personal Shares Portfolio. It is important to do this both to keep a
record of your holdings but also to track how the portfolio of
shares is faring. With on-line trading, the website host actually
holds the paperwork and your shares are owned as a nominee. One
disadvantage of this is that it is the host that receives all the
company paperwork and any perks that go with share ownership.
However, there is a move in place to change this in favour of the
shareholder i.e. you.
As regards mechanics, the website will require you to “float” the
portfolio before actually dealing although interest is usually paid
on idle balances. Charges are now much cheaper than using a broker
and can be, for example, as low as £10 per trade for UK market
transactions. Stamp duty of .5% is still payable as with all share
buying.
The purpose of this article is to set out what, typically, will be
displayed on your portfolio for each named share you hold. Share
holdings will be set out in blocks by the market, for example,
London Equities, Investment Trusts, New York SE. On the website I
use, there is also a grand summary at the end of all holdings.
Reading from left to right, you will see:-
Bid: The selling price of the share
Ask: The buying price
Price: The mid-price supplied by the exchange
P.Close: The closing price of the previous day
Last: The last trade price and time of trade
Change: The change in price from the previous close
Volume: The recent trade volume in millions or thousands
Units: The number of shares held
Cost: The price paid for each share bought
Value: The number of shares held times the Price
Notes: Comments on the trade
Profit: Units times Cost compared with Value
Finally, note that the price is streamed directly from the market
with a 15 minute lag so that it is possible to review your actual
position at any stage of a trading day. |
