Investor of the week: David de Villiers

This week we chat to David de Villiers, an EasyEquities investor, just like you.Where it all started.

My journey started in my first year of work. Having just finished at UCT I was ready to start making big returns in the market. I didn't even know how to make a trade or where to start. I remember also thinking why we had never discussed this in class. 

Where it all started

I opened a trading account with my bank to trade equities on their platform. I tried to invest R1000 a month. My risk appetite grew dramatically as I learnt that with the minimum trading fees, I would need to make very high returns (more than 24%) to make any money at all. That is great if you are looking to invest for 1-5 years, but being 23 years old I was rather impatient. I started to invest in penny stocks (or cent stocks) that I was betting would move 24% in a couple of months. There was an upside to this as it taught me how to trade low liquid stocks not investing massive amounts of cash. 

Don't try and cover the whole market, pick a couple of shares and get to know them well. Chat to like-minded people and determine where you think the share is going to go over the next year. This helps prevent impulse investing - buying too high or selling too early.

1. They allow anyone to invest.. If EasyEquities was around when I was at school I would have started earlier. The younger you start the more your money can grow. Hopefully it works out better than it did for Stan from South Park. 

2. The transaction costs. This is what primarily drew me to EasyEquities (the ease of the platform was secondary, having already learnt how to invest over the years). It's vital to know your return is not getting eaten away by transaction costs. 

Where to from here for me?

Over the last couple of years our investment club of four has managed to build up a bit of capital from trading equities. We are now at that stage where we are allocating some of our capital into business ventures.

Get in touch with David on twitter @DdeV88.