What's up you guys, sasha here today, i want to talk about a few investing tricks, but not the obvious ones, not the ones that you hear in pretty much every youtube video. I want to go a little bit deeper and talk about a few different ways in which you can maybe go and improve your investing performance in 2021 through things that you possibly haven't actually thought about. Some of the tips will reference certain companies, others will reference specific tax advantaged accounts of terminology that is based on the uk, because that's where i live, but in most other countries, including the us, canada and australia, there are equivalent companies and equivalent accounts available as well. So just go and do your own homework for how you can go and make use of it wherever you are.

The first tip that i have is to take advantage of every single platform available to you in terms of the unique specificity of, however, that platform works. So, for example, for those of us based in the uk, i can go and tell you about three different platforms that exist that i particularly like to use and the reasons why i use each of them to take advantage. Now i like to invest in my portfolio in index funds and in particular i like to keep my money within the s p 500, because i see massive long-term potential in mimicking the biggest 500 companies that exist on u.s markets. So that's where i keep that money in the uk a company called free trade allows you to go and set up an investing account completely for free and they charge you fees if you go and buy stocks denominated in dollars.

So i go and take the advantage of that company by investing in the vusa etf, which mimics the s p 500, but which is denominated in british pounds, and that means they can go and deposit money into free trade. I can go and buy booster and keep it long-term. Would anaheim pay any fees at all. I use free trade to buy any other etfs that are also traded on the london stock exchange for exactly the same reason in that i can buy and sell them completely.

For free, for example, the ishares global, clean energy is another etf that i have in my portfolio. If you're interested in trying free trade out make sure you go and use my link in the description below, because if you use that link you'll be able to go and set up an account with a minimum deposit and get a free share worth up to 200 Pounds just for the privilege of signing up so make sure you go and check it out if you are interested. The next platform that i really like to take advantage of is called etoro and the one unique thing about etoro that the other platforms do not offer. Is they don't charge stamp duty? So etory do charge you a fee for converting your pounds into dollars because the platform works in dollars, but once you've paid that 0.5 fee to convert your pounds into dollars, there is no other charges for you to be able to invest in uk listed companies.

This is the slightly weird thing, so i can go and use atari in order to buy uk listed stocks without having to pay the stamp duty, which i do with other platforms, and i make sure that i use that to my advantage, because once i converted money To dollars, then i can go and trade these uk companies forever without having to pay any extra fees on top and normally uk stamp duty is 0.5 on every single buy of a stock. So the moment you go and buy more than one you've already saved money. The one downside with etoro is that you can't buy aim listed stocks which is sort of a secondary exchange below the main london stock exchange, which is one of where some of my favorite companies are actually traded, but all the same within the main body of lse. You can still go and invest in some companies that are really like, like ocado just eat or national grid.

So there's still a lot of value in there for people who like to go and invest in uk companies. If you're interested in trying etoro out make sure you go and use my link in the description below to go and set up your account, they don't offer any free shares like the other platforms, but because of this unique advantage that i just told you. This is probably the best way to invest in uk listed companies. You have to deposit at least 200 to get started, but if you do like investing in uk based companies, this is a really great option, so make sure you go and check them out.

Last on my list of platforms that i take advantage of is trading two one, two that i have made quite a lot of videos about. I really really like them. They allow you to go and invest in us based companies completely for free, no fees. No foreign exchange fees, no anything in the uk can go load money onto trading212.

You can then go and buy u.s stocks, which is where most of my money is held. You can invest in anything from tesla all the way to fiverr and everything in between, and i really like that. I like the fact that it's completely fluid and you can go and set up a stocks and shares isa on trading 202 as well completely for free. You can do the same on free trade, but it costs three pounds a month.

But if you're interested in taking the unique advantages of each particular platform, then you can go and set up a trading two-on-two account as well. By the way, if you use my link for trading 212 in the description below, you will also get another free share worth up to 100 pounds if you go and set up an account and make the minimum deposit, which is one pound. So, if you're interested in checking that out make sure you go and check that out as well and see what you think for yourself. My next trick is to divide your money between different companies in order to get increased protection for your money and increased access to it.

Let me explain first of all, every investing company in the uk that people should be setting their accounts up with should be regulated and all of the main ones are by the financial conduct authority and companies that are regulated by the financial conduct authority. Have your money and assets so if you hold shares within that company up to 85 000 pounds per company protected by that scheme, so essentially the government guarantees you the money in the worst case scenario where the company goes burst or they can go completely illiquid, they Can't get your money back to you. Whatever happens, you can go and get your money back through the government and that scheme is pretty robust and it actually pays out pretty quickly within a matter of days now. I know that most people don't have way more than 85 000 pounds worth of investments hanging about, but if you are just starting on your journey, in my opinion, i think it's really great for the reasons i outlined just earlier to have several different accounts.

Take advantage of them and if those investments do grow over time and you add more money to them and the investments of some of your companies grow several times over then in those cases, maybe one or two of them will actually begin approaching. The 85 000 mark and you can go and make multiple uses of the 85 000 allowance per company that you hold your money with. So that's one really good reason, but another really good reason on top of this protection is the fact that sometimes some of these platforms run into difficulties like we've seen over the last few days with the whole gamestop fiasco, and sometimes there's technical issues. Sometimes, there's just time that it takes to go and verify your withdrawal accounts or provide the necessary documentation for the company to go and actually look at your documentation and anything else like that and, for example, let's say you need your money relatively quickly and one of The platforms you have your money in uh will just take a few days to actually get your money to you, for whatever reason, maybe a market condition, maybe an internal one.

It doesn't matter if you have your money invested in several different ones. The likelihood is, if you need it quickly, at least one of them is going to be a bit more quick and maybe you'll get your money very very quickly through one, and that means that if you ever need to quickly go and get your money out, you'll Be able to do it if you have multiple different platforms on the go, which brings me nicely to tip number three, which is to do a test withdrawal from the investment account that you go and set up shortly after you create the account just be super careful. The one thing not to do is don't set up an isa account deposit money into it and then do a test withdrawal, because that will actually reduce your annual isa allowance for that year by the amount that you withdraw only go and do the test withdrawal from A regular investing account, but here is why i do it when you go and set up an account when you first go and fund the account quite often you'll go and fund it by making either a bank deposit or maybe, in some cases, even using things. Like apple pay, but when you come to withdraw the money, this is where i hear a lot of people complaining, because i say that company is holding on to my cash they're, not letting me have it.

They are bad people, they are awful. They are just basically protecting those customers, money by increased verification checks when people withdraw the money back, and that is normal. That is okay and that's actually a good thing. In particular, if you draw money to a different account, the one that you use to deposit the money that is probably going to be highly likely that you'll have to go and submit some additional documentation or go through additional verification checks before you can actually draw the Money down and those checks might take several days because it typically takes humans to actually process them and especially if you go and use apple pay, for example, to go and load the first bunch of money.

But then we're drawing to a different place to your bank. Account because it's the only method you can use to withdraw the money in those cases, you're probably gon na - have to go and do those checks. So i try to get ahead of the curve. Whenever i have an account with one of these platforms, i try to go and do the verification checks at the beginning.

When i don't need the money urgently, when it's not important when time is not of the essence, i deposit some money and then we draw some of that money back and i complete the verification steps at that point so that at the point further down the line. When i do need the money and for whatever reason, maybe to reinvest in something else, maybe to move it somewhere, i actually can do that process much more quickly, because, hopefully my account is already verified. They've done all their checks already and i can go and withdraw their money much more quickly. That second time my tip number four is to catalyze and market drops now, don't take me the wrong way.

I am completely not the kind of guy who likes doing day, trading or short-term trading or trying to time or game the market. That's not me, that's not what i do. I invest for the long term, but even if you invest for the long term, there is still a massive opportunity to invest on dips. Let me explain: a large part of my portfolio is invested in what i call high growth squared stocks.

If you're interested in what high growth square stocks are or why i invest in them, i'm gon na put a link up here and in the description below, if you're interested in a video where i go through the depths of that. But anyway, because i like investing in companies that are a little bit more volatile than maybe some other really big ones. Quite often when i go and invest some money in the next few days or in the next few weeks, the company will actually go and dip. Sometimes, by five percent, sometimes by 10 or in case some cases even more and what i do is i then go and assess as to what caused the company to dip.

If it's some kind of exogenous market conditions, if it's something else happening in different part of the market, if there's just a general depression of the entire market, if it's something that is not in any way fundamental to my initial assessment of whether i should have invested In that company, if it doesn't change my point of view on where that company is going, if it doesn't really have any material impact on my projections and what i think is gon na be happening in the future. I love that particular point in time. When i see that stock depreciating from when i bought in because that means on the next range of money that i'm putting into investments, i can go and buy more of that stock at an even better price. It doesn't make it any worse.

In my opinion, it's actually just an advantage if a company goes on dips, say 10. It just means that whenever i go and sell that stock at some point in the future that second investment that i've made is essentially going to be worth 10 more than the original batch of money that i've made for no reason whatsoever other than market fluctuation. My next top tip is to use the inviter friend feature that most of these accounts offer, for example, with free trade. You can go and set up an account once you've set up the account using my link in the description below to get your first free share.

Once you've done that, you can then go and invite any other friends or family, whoever you want to the platform and with free trade. There is no up limit whatsoever. You can write as many people as possible and each time they use your link to go and set up their account. They will get a free share, but you will as well that's how it works and you can go and get a bunch of free shares.

That way now free trade said they offer shares worth up to 200 pounds and in some cases they can be worth a lot. But i found on average, based on the shares that i've got so far that they're probably worth somewhere in the 8 to 9 pound region, there's 90 different options, and some of them are more common and more frequent than others, but it's still better than nothing. It's still really cool to be paid essentially for using an investment platform. So that's a really nice thing to make use of now trading.

Two one two do something very similar: they have an upper limit of 20 invites so you only get three shares for the first 20 people. You refer. If anyone signs up after that 20 people mark trading 202 will still give them a free share, but you won't get another one. On top now, trading 202 say that they have shares that are worth up to 100, which is less than what free trade say, and their distribution has widened slightly more recently, but it's still probably better.

On average, you still get slightly more value. I'd say the average that i'm getting, for example, is about 11 pounds per share, so you'll probably be able to get a little bit more there as well, but most people can go if they want to. If they choose to it's up to them. It's their choice.

Go and set up an account with both, and then you get two free shares from anyone who decides to do that. So that's a big winner there as well. The best thing is: you're only going to be recommending these platforms, if you yourself actually like them like it, is if you're, only gon na be telling your friends and family to potentially sign up. If you tried it - and you thought it was good like i am - i genuinely use both of those platforms i like them.

I put out regular videos where i show what my investments in them look like, and i have no qualms and recommending them to people that i personally know as well as on videos like this. So that's a really big advantage there and if even you, just get 10 people to go and sign up and they sign up safe with one of each you're about 200 pounds up just by having those people sign up for your affiliate links. My next top tip is to invest in growth, not flat lines, and this sounds incredibly obvious and a lot of people say well, of course, that's what i do, but so many people i know so many people, especially people who have been investing for a long time. Just go and invest in companies that they feel secure that they feel are always going to be there that they feel the money is certain.

There's. Definitely nothing going to happen to them. They're kind of like more scared of losing the money. Then they are looking at.

Potentially growing it sometimes they'll go and invest in the biggest uk supermarket chain, because you know people will always need to buy food. People will always need to go and shop somewhere and, as a result, that's a really robust, safe investment, and you know what they even pay three percent per year in dividends, which sounds really nice until you go and look at a 10-year chart where the share price Collapses by half and as a result that three percent dividend yield doesn't really sound, particularly enticing or exciting, and when the supermarket chain is already the biggest in the country with the biggest market share, the big question is: how far can realistically, it actually grow from there? How far will that share price be able to grow? Will it be able to double? Will it be able to triple or multiply by 10 times over the next decade or longer? The answer in some of those cases may not be yes. In some other cases, you see people investing in large oil companies or large banks for exactly the same reason, but it just boggles my mind because i see lots of youtubers advising exactly the same course of action, even though there is very limited long-term benefit from doing So i personally only really am interested investing in relatively small companies that have the opportunity to grow. They have the opportunity to actually grow their share price that have the opportunity to develop outside of where they're currently operating, and hopefully the market in which they're operating has the opportunity to grow as well.

That's the kind of thing that i'm interested in because i am investing in growth, i'm not interested in just perpetually investing in flat lines. My next tip is to make the most use of tax advantaged accounts in the uk. These accounts are called ices and in uk you can invest in stocks and shares through a stocks and shares iso account. Now, if you're going to make an investment, if you don't use one of these iso accounts, then whenever you go and draw the money down at some point in the future, you will have to pay tax and in some cases you will have to pay quite a Lot of tax in the uk there are tax-free brackets so for dividends.

You can earn up to 2000 pounds a year without having to pay any tax and for capital gains. You can get up to 12 300 pounds in terms of the gains on your investments without having to pay tax on them. But if you have multiple different types of investments or other things that qualify for capital gains other than your investment portfolio in the same particular year when you want to go and draw it down, if your investments are not in an isa, you might find that you're Going to be many thousands of pounds out of pocket in the last few days, the uk chancellor sunak has been talking about potentially reducing some of these tax-free bans and the same could be happening in other countries as well because of the economic situation that we're finding Ourselves in the beauty of these tax advantages accounts, including uk isis - is that whenever you can put money into them, they are guaranteed in the future to not attract any tax, regardless of what that zero percent margin is, so some people might be saying. Well, i'm only going to be withdrawing up to say twelve thousand pound three hundred twelve thousand three hundred pounds a year and therefore i don't really care about my money being in a tax advantaged account.

But if that amount drops in a few years time - and you can only go and draw down say one thousand pounds worth of gains suddenly the situation might change. If your money's sitting in an icer that just doesn't matter, you don't care what that allowance is because you can always go and draw it down without having to pay any money. The ice allowance in the uk at the moment is very generous. It is 20 000 pounds per year.

You can put up to twenty thousand pounds into your stocks and shares isa or any part of it without having to pay any capital gains tax or any dividend tax on the proceeds. Now that amount might also shift, but up to the fifth of april as it stands, it is still twenty thousand pounds and unless something changes you can go and invest another twenty thousand pounds immediately after from the sixth of april onwards, as well. Even if it drops, even if it's a lower amount from the next financial year is still very useful, if you are investing to take advantage of an opportunity to invest without having to pay tax instead of paying tax for the privilege, don't forget that there is another Type of tax advantaged investing account that is about to become available in the uk. It is called a sip account, although there are already some providers that provide those types of accounts.

Those are not real investing opportunities in my opinion, because they only offer you a very limited number of funds that you can go and invest in and, in my opinion, that's no different to having just a regular pension account where you can go and choose between five Different options: free trade is about to go and launch a genuine, full sip account, which is a a form of pension in the uk, which means that you can go and invest your pension savings or add more money to it personally yourself and go to invest your Pension into real stocks and shares, and then you get to benefit from being able to go and grow that portfolio as you see fit, invest in whatever you choose, not whatever some other company chooses and gain much more than any of those funds typically pay out. Even if you just have your money invested in something simple, like an s p 500 index fund, if you guys found these tips useful, if you have make sure you smash the like button for youtube algorithm, that really really helps these videos reach more people. So the more people can go and take advantage of all of these little tricks. Thank you very much for watching.

I really appreciate it if you're interested in more content to do with personal finance do with investing and to do with making more of your money make sure you subscribe to this channel, because that is exactly what i talk about in every single video. Thank you. So much for watching once again and see you guys in the next video you.