Halifax Share dealing is quite a good way for any novice to experiment with the stock exchange. I am writing this from a novice perspective for an absolute novice who wants to get started.
There are two types of account, either you can go for a normal share dealing account suited for investors and speculators who want to be able to buy and sell shares on the same day, ie to make a profit in the afternoon from shares that have gone up in price since the morning, or from the previous day. However if you are only using small amounts of money to buy and sell shares in values less than £500, it is usually the case that commission charges with Halifax or any other share dealing service will wipe out most of your profits, unless you are fortunate to be tipped off about a penny share that dramatically jumps up in value (but such finds are rare unless you are very experienced, and there are many internet rumors to encourage penny share investors to part with their money quickly).
If you are interested in building up a portfolio of penny shares on a budget or only have a small amount of money to invest, for regular monthly investments I would recommend you create a Halifax Share Builder account, where the commission charges for purchase of share is nominal. This is a service where Halifax buy in bulk on set days of the month, and dramatically reduce the commission costs for account holders.
Once your account is set up, it is simple enough to login through the Halifax website www.halifax.co.uk, follow the login options for online banking.
The great thing about managing share dealing accounts with Halifax is that at no extra charge you can create multiple account names for managing you various share portfolio's, ie X'S Family Fortune, X's Oil Shares, X's Environmentally Friendly shares., etc. Once shares have been purchased, which is also a very simple online process you will see them in your share portfolio normally within 24 hours, at the portfolio will have hyperlinks from your portfolio to indexes and market news and reviews of your shares.
I have recently tried out the Trade Plan facility that Halifax has for share dealing. It is a facility which allows you to get the website to automate the process of buying and selling shares for you, without the need for you to watch the market, and it only costs a couple of pounds on top of normal commission charges to set this up. For example in volatile markets that fluctuate a lot, you can use the Trade Plan facility to only buy shares for you when they drop to a certain price e.g. if current price is 70p you can set up a trade plan to buy only when the shares drop to say 65p, and set parameters so that the tradeplan will only sell the shares when they go above say 80p. The tradeplan can also be used to minimise losses. So in the above example you could set the tradeplan to sell your shares if the market price starts to drop say below 55p. This facility means you don't have to worry about watching the market every second worrying about what your shares are doing. The one I set up recently I programmed to buy Royal Bank of Scotland Shares at 70p and to only sell them when they reach £2. The tradeplan can be set to remain open for a set period of time ie 30days, 60days, 90days or you can put a end date in the very distant future if you prefer. Once the shares are bought you can always ammend or cancel the tradeplan price or date settings, or just sell the shares when you want.
Pictures of Halifax Share Dealing Ltd
Gives you the facility to have multiple account names, and has links to news on your share portfolio.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Comments about this review »
hughesmonger 18.02.2009 01:55
Great information and helpful. Kinda interested on getting myself busy with some shares on the stock market. Great way for the spare pennies I guess. XD
martinwi 04.11.2008 23:47
I found this a short review and, yes it could have had more info, but it was very helpful to me. Martin.
Advantages: It is great fun and could even make you a fortune Disadvantages: Shares can fall in value as well as rise and this site does not give you advice
Advantages: One of the cheapest share dealing organisations around. Disadvantages: Dealing on the telephone can take a while (as does nearly every helpline nowadays)
Aug 22nd, 2008
(Oct 16th, 2008)
very helpful by (86%):
helpful by (14%):
