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\t\t\t\t\t\t\tShares Magazine<\/p>\n
12 March 2026<\/p>\n
\t\t <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cDo your reading.\u201d That\u2019s the first step for anyone wanting to take the plunge into the stock market, according to 56-year-old Simone.\u00a0<\/p>\n For her, what this looked like was six months spent properly getting to grips with the basics before she made her first investment; learning the difference between shares<\/a> and funds<\/a>, then passive and actively managed funds<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Early on, she developed a simple mantra to help guide her through: \u201cIf I don\u2019t understand it, I don\u2019t buy it\u201d. This has kept her away from \u2018hot\u2019 areas like cryptocurrency. \u00a0<\/p>\n Taking the first steps\u00a0<\/p>\n Londoner Simone made her first investment back in 2016 just after the Brexit vote. This was an unexpected event which acted as catalyst for her to take proper control of her finances and her future. Simone started out with \u00a320,000 in her portfolio and now, 10 years later, having seen it through the pandemic, Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, \u2018Liberation Day\u2019 and various UK chancellors, it\u2019s comfortably sitting in six figures, having achieved a return of around 10% a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Like most people, Simone was holding her money in a run of the mill savings account which was offering a low interest rate and she became dissatisfied.\u00a0<\/p>\n She, like many others, thought that moving her hard-earned savings out of her account and putting it to work in markets was high risk, \u201cbut I was going to do it\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo one really wanted to take the risk of making any investments during that period of Brexit and I decided \u2018you know what? I\u2019ll give it a try\u2019, because I don\u2019t think I could do any worse\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the start Simone had very short-term, practical goals for her investing; making enough to cover the travel costs for her work in the charity sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n Working part time for a disability rights organisation meant a reduced income while her time travelling around the country as a peer advocate, helping people diagnosed with autism move out of hospitals and into their own homes, put added pressure onto her purse too.\u00a0<\/p>\n Simone also took a firm grasp of her pension following the pandemic after being \u201cshocked\u201d at how her workplace pension was performing. She transferred it into a SIPP<\/a> and over the past 18 months has managed to boost her pot by 35%. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Where did Simone invest first?\u00a0<\/p>\n After her extensive reading and research Simone made her maiden investment into a global ESG tracker fund, a very deliberate choice based on her personal investment requirements.\u00a0<\/p>\n Having spent her career working in health care, Simone decided she would only give her money to companies helping to drive better outcomes in her sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n This has led to deliberately avoiding companies involved in the US death penalty supply chain, or those supporting the Assisted Dying Bill currently before the UK Parliament. \u201cI try to invest ethically where I can,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Her dual focus of investing to make the world a better place and to get some decent returns for herself makes Simone an increasingly rare breed: a self-proclaimed ESG investor<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The basic ESG idea can be adapted person-to-person depending on their priorities. For example, some wouldn\u2019t invest in anything from the oil and gas sector due to the negative environmental impact, but Simone is open to holding them as she focuses more on the \u2018S\u2019 factor.\u00a0<\/p>\n She faced a potential test of her moral mettle in recent years when the outbreak of several hot wars in the era of a more combative US president and European governments committing massive amounts spending on defence, saw weapons manufacturers make some of the best equity returns in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But Simone wasn\u2019t tempted to get involved, partly due to her research process. Every time she wants to make a trade Simone asks herself: \u2018Why should I invest?\u2019 \u2018Why shouldn\u2019t I invest?\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n This helps her deal with common investment emotions like \u2018FOMO\u2019 (fear of missing out) because she fully understands why she didn\u2019t buy into the latest trend. Hence when it came to defence stocks, Simone knew that trade \u201cwasn\u2019t for me\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI avoid anything that\u2019s going to cause harm, however attractive that might be,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s a foolproof process. One case of buyer\u2019s remorse for Simone was investing in emerging markets the night Russian troops were circling Ukraine. \u201cI thought, \u2018oh my god why didn\u2019t I see it coming?\u2019,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n What is an ESG investor? \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n ESG stands for \u2018environmental, social and governance\u2019, and involves choosing investments based on factors associated with moral behaviour rather than purely financial returns. \u00a0<\/p>\n Otherwise known as sustainable or ethical investing, it has been around for decades, with BMO launching the first active fund of this ilk back in 1984.\u00a0<\/p>\n This investment style gained massive popularity during the pandemic, when UK savers put almost a billion pounds a month into responsible investment funds in 2020, a 66% annual increase, according to data from the Investment Association. However, it has fallen off significantly since. In December 2025 alone, responsible funds saw a \u00a3348 million exodus.<\/p>\n \u00a0Learning lessons from Warren Buffett\u00a0<\/p>\n After making returns she was happy with from her first buy, Simone broadened out, investing in the L&G Healthcare Technology & Innovation UCITS ETF<\/a>, a smattering of FTSE trackers, the Lazard Emerging Markets fund<\/a>, convertible bonds, gold and silver, where she recently trimmed her exposure. She divested from technology stocks last year when the volatility was becoming \u201ctoo manic\u201d for her.\u00a0<\/p>\n One investment mantra she has been a follower of is from Warren Buffett: buying and holding for the long term. Simone has aligned herself with his \u2018steady eddie\u2019 approach as her investing goals developed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Back when she started out with her SIPP, Simone says her mistake was moving things around too much.\u00a0<\/p>\n Having made some solid returns on her initial investment, Simone\u2019s confidence grew and she expanded her investment timeline further into the future than just the next London to Manchester train.\u00a0<\/p>\n Buying property and having a good life, both now and in retirement, are her major long-term goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over time, Simone\u2019s approach to risk<\/a> evolved too and instead of it being something that she tries to avoid it\u2019s now something she can make an informed judgment call on, aided by having proper portfolio diversification<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n This involves taking her own advice and continuing to read to help her understand what the big picture conversations around AI and technology mean for her investments.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m paying much more attention to things and upping my own game,\u201d Simone says. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Related news Shares Magazine 12 March 2026 \u201cDo your reading.\u201d That\u2019s the first step for anyone wanting to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[45,49,48,133,131,132],"class_list":["post-534727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"March](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/March-Shares-Cover.jpg\")
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