Investment special: Confessions of a stock picker

My name’s Freddy and I’m an online gambling addict. The problem started a few years ago when I opened an account on Betfair.com. At first it was small bets on football games, maybe the odd greyhound. A fiver here, a tenner there. Click, click, click. It was fun. Pretty soon, however, the hobby had developed into a minor obsession. I moved on to the harder stuff: cricket, tennis, even X Factor results. I had some wins but more losses: £20; £30; oops, there goes a hundred. Click, click, click. Then I downloaded the Betfair app onto my phone. Tap, tap, tap. I realised things had gone too far when I had almost all my savings on Andy Murray to win a quarter-final somewhere. He did, happily. But I got short odds — and it was Andy Murray, for goodness sake. I talked to my wife, vowed to stop, and I pretty much have.

But now I’ve got a new fix and a new app. It’s called a Hargreaves Lansdown Vantage Fund and Share Account. I’ve become that least respected creature in the financial universe: the amateur stock-picker. -Actually, amateur isn’t quite right — I’m more a know-nothing picker. I like the Hargeaves Lansdown ‘platform’ because it presents you with lots of technical-looking data, which you can pretend to understand but don’t have to. The buying and selling is done by hitting a big green button labelled ‘Deal Now’.

I only buy and sell obvious shares, in companies that advertise on television, and usually because of some vague hunch. I sometimes invest after the most cursory glance at the business pages. In a Michael Lewis book, I’d probably be called a ‘lamb’ or a ‘mark’ or some other derisive term that traders use for the idiots who dare to play their game.