Boost your investment skills

When you hear about ‘blue-chip’ companies on the news, they’re talking about larger firms that are more likely to be stable and reliable investments, even in tough times.

Over time, some investments in your portfolio will perform better, while others will do less well. As this will change the amount of risk in your portfolio, you may ‘rebalance’, or adjust, this ratio by buying and selling assets and funds.

Timing the market, or buying low and selling high, is incredibly difficult – even the famous investor Warren Buffet warned us not to do it. By investing regularly, you buy more shares when prices are low and fewer shares when prices are high.

Despite the market rising and falling substantially during that time, investments in the UK stock market delivered average annual returns of 4.9% in the 10 years to 2017.

When investing, you can expect to pay fees for a range of things, such as fund management, trading, online share dealing services, products and financial advice.

Of the 11.1 million ISAs held in the UK in 2017, 77% were in cash. However, if you can afford to invest your money for more than five years, a stocks and shares ISA may make your money work harder than cash.

Cash is a useful part of your portfolio mix, as it means you have funds for a rainy day – unlike the 27% of UK households who have no spare cash to fall back on.

You can invest in a stocks and shares ISA and in a pension with a lump sum, or through regular monthly payments.

You can invest up to £20,000 each tax year into individual savings accounts, such as a cash ISA or a stocks and shares ISA.

The cost of everyday goods and services can rise faster than the value of your cash savings when interest rates are low.

In 2008, the FTSE All-Share recorded eight of its strongest days of the 10 years to 2017, despite market volatility at the time.

FTSE, or "Footsie" stands for the "Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange".

When you’re creating a portfolio, it’s worth thinking about how much money you can afford to put aside when choosing investments of varying risk levels.

Over time, your life goals - and what you need from your investments – will change. That’s why investors regularly look at their portfolio to check it is in line with their personal investment goals.

When you make investments and hold them for the long term without withdrawing the interest, you can benefit from the power of compounding.

If you had invested £10,000 in the FTSE-100 in 1986, and reinvested the dividends over a 30-year period, it would now be worth nearly £127,000.

The interest earned on a bond remains the same, no matter whether its market price goes up or down.

You can find important financial information about a company that you are considering investing in by looking at their annual report.

Some funds which offer a regular income aim to provide 11 payments of a similar amount, changing the twelfth to account for the fund’s performance.

The aim of a diversified portfolio is that it contains different types of investments: this means not every asset will perform in the same way at the same time, such as going down in value.