The London Stock Exchange and me

      I've always had some interest in Stocks and Shares, probably inherited from my Father and my Grandfather, who were both keen buyers and sellers. For my part I can quite happily read a financial journal and then at some point, probably fall asleep! But there was a point, sometime in the early nineties, when I was looking at various investments and considered some shares to be a possibility. In those days I was really interested and reading up upon various aspects and watching the flow of prices and finding out how things worked, there's always loads of free advice and tips, if this is good, bad or just downright useless.
      Finally, after some considerable length of time and various false starts, I found a well known and up to then, successful high street retailer, who were in serious trouble, with their share price, being as low as one penny. But even in this state I personally still had great belief in them as I was and still am, a customer of theirs.

  
      So I decided this was the one for me, even though it was a complete gamble, but first I talked to one or two friends about this potential investment and one even wanted to match my stake and invest with me. But, one of these friends also suggested that first I speak to a couple of financial advisers, with whom he was familiar and so I agreed. I visited their office and told them of my plans, which they immediately pointed out to me were completely wrong and doomed to almost certain failure from day one, they also suggested a couple of "more suitable" alternatives. So I took their advise and they happily took a percentage of my cash and everyone was happy.

 
      Now the end result is all rather predictable, the shares I was persuaded to buy, one company crashed within a fortnight, the other lingered on for a year or two and I was lucky to get a little of my money back. And the shares I had wanted to buy, well naturally they eventually went ballistic, at my worst estimate I would now be worth in the region of well over a billion pounds, that's a simple matter of £1000,000,000. And the rest! If anything came out of all this, well I do know one, if not both advisers has done time and for myself I will never again take advise upon the stock market, from any so-called adviser.