Vincent asks: What do you think of online share trading? I personally think that it is the best investment and you blame nobody but yourself.
Maya replies:
Coming from a stockbroking background, I have mixed views on this. Investing directly into the share market can be a cost-effective way to invest if you start off with about R5 000. However, it depends on how you are investing.
In my experience, private investors tend to get very emotional, buying on “tips” and selling at the worst times. They tend to get burnt during market “bubbles”. It takes discipline to invest in the market. If you follow a strategy of buying quality companies with good dividend yields you can over time build up a quality share portfolio that will look a lot like the share portfolios held by the large asset managers, but usually at a lower cost.
Another way to invest directly is to invest in exchange traded funds (EFT). These track an index rather than being managed by an active fund manager, and something like the RAFI index weights the shares according to value rather than the size of the company.
That said there are good fund managers out there. I personally invest in both ETFs and active fund managers, but I look for those managers that make contrarian decisions and who keep their fund sizes relatively low so that they can take significant bets on shares they have conviction in.
I also have a share portfolio of quality shares, but I do find myself obsessing too much about latest company announcements and play the “if only” game all the time! My debit order into an ETF fund is definitely the investment that stresses me out the least.