Martin Lewis: A beginner's guide to investing
Funds, shares, ISAs, how to pick, what's the risk and reward and more
Done right, investing returns smack the pants off savings. Yet too few people in the UK invest, outside their pensions at least. If you've money you can lock away for 5+ years, it's worth having some invested, or you're likely missing out. This isn't about picking shares, it's about spreading your assets wide to mitigate risk, and hopefully gaining growth. This guide will help you decide if you should invest and how best to do it, whether it's £10 a month or a large lump sum.
Based on The Martin Lewis Money Show Live 'Investing For Beginners' special. It's well worth watching that on ITVX in conjunction, where Martin was joined by a panel of experts. Martin didn't pen this guide himself, but all the info comes from his show, and he's been through it, reviewed it, made changes and added in some extras too.
Plus, we want to thank Holly Mackay, CEO of Boring Money, and authorised financial planner Kate Gannon, Chartered Financial Planner and Vice President at Personal Finance Society, for reviewing and fact checking the guide.
It's the first incarnation of this guide. Do feedback on what works or doesn't.
The jaw drop bit… how investing can massively outperform saving
As a nation, we underinvest – we’re risk averse, and that itself carries risk.
Even if you put money in the top-paying savings accounts over the last decade, it would have lost value compared to inflation. That means in real terms, even in savings, your purchasing power would've shrunk.
If you'd have invested the money in a tracker fund, which mimics the performance of a major stock market index such as the FTSE 100 (UK’s 100 biggest firms), S&P 500 (biggest US firms) or a global tracker (biggest firms from all over the world) over the same period, the growth would’ve been up to ten times higher than that in savings. Just look at this chart...
And if this surprises you, you’re not alone, there were shocked faces when Martin explained this on his Investing for beginners show back in December, here’s a clip of it.
Watch: Martin’s TV audience shocked at investment returns
What is investing? And what are shares and bonds?
Investing is where you put money into a share, bond, fund (more on those later) or other asset where the returns on your money are not guaranteed, it's really that simple. Many people think of this ‘risk’ as a negative, but it's an explainer, not a warning. It just means there is variance, that things can move either way.
Saving | Investing | |
|---|---|---|
Capital | You will always get this back and that is protected up to £120,000 by the savings safety scheme. | Your capital may GROW so you get back more than you put in or it may SHRINK so you get back less than you put in. |
Income | This is often a set amount of interest, though it can be ‘variable’ (ie, move with interest rates) or ‘fixed’ (so locked in). | You can also earn income by investing via additional payments (such as dividends) on top of whether your capital grows or not. And here too it can be ‘variable’ or ‘fixed’ depending on the investment type. |
As a worked example: take Premium Bonds, which some people think of as investing. They’re not, as you are guaranteed to get your capital back, it is just the income which depends on a prize draw. So with them the risk is you earn nothing, rather than get back less. However, as our Premium Bonds Probability Calculator shows, for most (not all), that isn’t a good gamble compared to standard saving. |
So, in a nutshell, investing is about the hope that you will get far greater growth than saving.
For (at the very least) beginners, the aim is to mitigate some of this risk and reduce the variance, so that you have less chance of making a big loss or even losing all your money, but equally less chance of making outrageously big returns. Yet as you’ve already seen above, typically over a long period, investing in a broad spread of assets should beat savings.
You may already be an investor: many people are already investors through workplace or private pensions, so understanding investing matters even if you don’t think of yourself as an investor.
The main beginners' investment types – shares & bonds
There are enormous numbers of different types of investments, ranging from the most well-known such as owning a share of a company, right up to complex derivatives and strange asset classes that only the most niche quants in the financial world understand.
A good beginner’s rule is if you don’t understand what it is, it isn’t for you.
So let's focus on the simple stuff. Before we start, however, it's worth noting most beginners should focus on buying funds with lots of investments in, rather than individual shares or bonds. Yet to understand funds, you first need to understand what’s in them…
What are stocks and shares?
A share literally means you own a tiny portion of a company – it could be as small as a millionth or a billionth. But it’s an asset that represents real ownership. This could be big, household names such as Meta, Centrica, HSBC, M&S or BT or smaller more niche firms.
There are two main ways that shares make money:
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Share price rise: You hope the share price rises. You buy at one level and if you sell higher, you could make more than you paid. Prices move based on profitability and the perception of future profitability.
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Income (dividends): Many (not all) companies share some of the cash they hold from profits with shareholders – a dividend. You can take it out, or reinvest it automatically so it buys more shares (similar to compound interest on savings).
The risk: the company goes bust and you lose all your money, the share price drops or your dividends stop.
The gain: if the company does well, the value of your shares and your dividends increase.
PS: In modern usage, ‘shares’ and ‘stock’ are often used interchangeably. Technically, a share is an individual piece of ownership, while stock is the overall idea of owning part of a company. An example should make this clearer… you would say, “I own 10 shares in Apple” not “I own 10 stock in Apple.” Yet if you own 10 shares in Apple, you could say, “I own Apple stock.”
Is investing a form of gambling?
We often get this kind of question when we talk about investing, so let's go to a direct quote from Martin...
When you own a share, a part of a company, you own an asset. Just like owning your own business is an asset. Would you say setting up your own business is gambling? You have an asset and there is always an element of risk – it could work well or collapse. Is buying a house gambling? The price could go up or down. You might rent it out for a lot, or you might rent it out for nothing.
I see buying shares (or more a shares fund) as much more akin to those than gambling, except compared to setting up a business there is usually a far lower barrier to entry – you can do it with £10. The really big difference is that gambling, crucially, usually has a negative expected return – there’s a fixed pot, some win, some lose, and 'the house' takes a chunk.
Investing isn’t the same. Fees can take a chunk, but the economy usually grows over time, and people can still win overall. So there are fundamental differences.
What are corporate or government bonds?
Bonds are a giant IOU, where you are loaning a company or government your money. They usually pay a regular amount of interest at a fixed rate. There’s often a maturity date, at which point the bond ends and the original amount is repaid to whoever holds the bond then.
Government bonds are the safest type (though this depends on the country). UK government bonds are known as gilts and have never defaulted – they've always paid what they promise, and you’ve always got the full amount back.
You can make (or lose) money investing in bonds because bond prices move. If interest rates go up, because the bond’s interest rate is relatively worse, the price can drop.
You can buy or sell bonds before maturity, but you may get back more or less than you paid. This is investing because the price can go up and down after you bought it.
The risk: it may struggle to pay interest and default on capital repayment (less likely with UK gilts). Or you may need to sell before maturity when the price is lower than you bought it for.
The gain: you get a better interest rate than savings and a capital profit (note: you also don't pay capital gains tax on UK gilt profits in many circumstances, which make them particularly interesting for higher rate taxpayers).
'Don’t confuse these with savings bonds'
This is investing, not saving. Don’t confuse these with ‘savings bonds’ – which are just fixed-rate savings accounts. In those, you put money in, you always get it back, and you get a fixed amount of interest.
Yet with investment bonds, the value of your initial capital can go up and down after you bought it, so it has a different risk profile.
What are funds? (and why most beginners should start here)
Very few beginners should buy individual shares – it can be riskier as you're banking on a single company doing well. Funds are where you start.
Funds are baskets of usually lots and lots of different investments usually of a similar class, so shares in smaller UK companies, or US technology companies. Or it could be a multi-asset fund, for example, 70% shares and 30% bonds. Buy the fund, and you own a slice of everything in it. Some parts will go up, some will go down, but you get the collective return across the basket.
Funds can include a collection or a mix of:
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Shares
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Bonds
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Property
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Commodities such as gold or cocoa
For example, a FTSE 100 tracker is an index fund. It follows the 100 biggest companies in the UK, and your investment moves up and down as their collective, weighted value (ie, the move of bigger companies has a bigger impact) go up and down. Other types of fund could cover US tech, global equities, emerging markets or ethical stocks. Funds give you a choice based on a theme.
Diversification mitigates the risk
Most beginners should invest in a wider spread of big, stable firms within funds, not by picking individual shares...
If you use funds to ensure you have a broad spread of mainstream investments, you are unlikely to lose everything, you're also less likely to get an extreme high and less likely to get an extreme low compared to if you invest in a single company's shares.
Yet don’t assume all funds are low risk. Someone got in touch to say they'd never invest again because they put their money in a ground rent fund. That's really specialised and based on a single industry, so that's pretty high risk. If you go ultra specialised and complex, you may be upping the risk, and need to understand that.
For most beginners, the aim is to spread your investment across the more vanilla types of shares and bonds.
The big question… active or passive funds?
Beginners investments broadly come in two different ways. It’s really important to understand the difference.
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Passive funds track an index such as the FTSE 100 or S&P 500. They are cheap and simple. They are run based on a computer model that just aims to mimic the index performance
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Active funds have managers who try to beat the market. Their aim is to outperform the standard index in that area, so you get better returns. Yet that means there is added cost so you pay more for these – which means they have to outperform even more substantially for you to do better after the costs.
So, what's better, an active or passive fund? Here are the views of Holly Mackay, CEO of Boring Money, and Kate Gannon, Vice President, Personal Finance Society...
"I think for beginners, passive funds make a lot of sense. I think of them a bit like a greatest hits album. You get a little bit of everything. You don't get bamboozled by choice, and most importantly they're easy to buy and they're cheap."
"It's a difficult one to actually balance out. What financial planners will do is build a hybrid of both within a portfolio for their client. But a [passive] has been doing really well of late and it will do really really well and grow and be brilliant while markets are strong, but will also drop at the same time. Whereas by paying a little bit more for an active fund, the manager is trying to add value and grow the fund out at all times."
Worth noting Holly’s website is about guiding beginners to DIY invest, Kate’s world is where people have enough assets to pay for an adviser, and that may explain the slight difference in attitude.
Martin's view is, as a beginner the type of things you may want to look at are an S&P 500 tracker and/or a global tracker (often heavily US dominated with some other countries' firms in too) and/or maybe a FTSE 100 or 250 tracker too (for UK exposure). This will give you a decent spread that will mimic the performance of a big chunk of the world’s markets by value. Passive can be easier because choosing is hard when you’re doing it yourself.
Funds come in different types
While passive or active is how they work, there are technical differences in the structure of funds too.
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ETFs are funds that trade on stock exchanges like shares, many of the cheapest passive index trackers are ETFs and they offer low costs and simplicity.
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Unit trusts are open-ended funds where you buy “units” in a pooled portfolio managed by a fund manager where the price is based on asset value.
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OEICs are similar to unit trusts but structured as companies with a single price for buying and selling.
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Investment trusts are closed-ended companies listed on the stock market. The share price can differ from the asset value.
How risky is investing?
This is what puts people off investing – it's volatile. Market tracker funds tend move up and down like a rollercoaster while cash savings tend to creep up steadily. The worry is with investing, what if I buy high and sell low?
It's true, this is the risk. There are no guarantees. It's about whether you decide the risk is worth it – and if you do, the key is to invest in a diverse portfolio over the long term. The worst thing a beginner can do for their state of mind is check prices every day. You’re investing for the long term, so you need to look at it irregularly over the long term.
Contrast these two graphs… they’re of the same thing
First look at this graph, it shows the volatility in four different stock market indices over a period. When you look at it, it seems scary, it goes up and down.
Now look at this graph, it shows the total returns of those same investments over a similar period...
So even though there was high volatility, the overall direction of travel was up. This is why it's about putting money away in a broad spread of assets for the long term.
When investing, Martin cautions ultimately only four things really matter in the end...
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The price you bought your investment at
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Any income the investment provides
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The price you sell your investment for
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Inflation
When you're looking day-to-day and the value of your investments are going up and down, you haven't lost anything. What matters is the price on the day you buy it and the day you sell it. Though remember: if you buy a share and the price drops, there's no rule that says it must bounce back to that level afterwards.
What you need to do when considering cashing in on an investment is ask yourself, would I invest at that cost today? If you would, stay with it. If you wouldn't, maybe think about doing something else with your money.
You can use ‘pound cost averaging’ to smooth out the risk
One way to mitigate any volatility, that many investment advisers suggest, is to drip feed a larger lump sum in smaller increments. If you're risk averse (which most beginners are), doing it little by little can help smooth out the regular short term ups and downs that are common.
"Pound cost averaging is something we do. So for instance, for £10,000, we would divide it by 10 and drop it in, month by month, say on the first of the month.”
If you invested all your money in one go, and the markets you invested in all suddenly tanked, you might start to panic. This way it would just mean if that happened you’d be buying some at a cheaper price.
Martin Lewis' golden rule for investing...
We've covered a lot of information so far and the topics and language may be brand new for many. So don't worry if it feels a little overwhelming, that's natural. Let's simplify things...
Only invest money you won't need for at least five years, after clearing expensive debts first and building an emergency fund, and put it in a broad spread of investments.
If you only take one thing away from this guide, there's nothing more important than this message. Here's what Martin says...
If you don’t have money that fits this, I’d say you’re not ready yet. It must be money you don’t need day-to-day. The last thing you want is to be forced to sell after a drop because you need the money for an emergency, such as replacing a smashed window. That’s why you need an emergency fund first of three to six months’ bills.
Is now a good time for beginners to start investing?
Here’s a transcript of dialogue between Martin and James McManus, Chief Investment Officer at JPMorgan Personal Investing, from Martin's show in December 2025. The big picture was investing is about a long-term commitment, which means short-term volatility is less relevant.
Martin: "One of the things you have to accept about investing, is there's always going to be uncertainty. The real question is, are you investing for the long term, where the ups and downs even themselves out? Are you doing it from a secure position where you've got a cash emergency fund? Do you have heavy debts to pay off [in which case investing isn’t a priority] and you can afford to put that money away and not touch it over that time?"
James: "I contend, there's never a bad time to start investing. There's an old adage that the best time to start investing was yesterday, and the second best time is to start today. Throughout my career, there's always been uncertainty, there's always been plenty of reasons to hold back and think twice about investing, but there's also reasons for optimism in the global economy, and we're optimistic about the outlook today when we look to the period ahead.
"I think 2025 is a great example of this, we had tariffs, we had lots of uncertainty, but financial markets as a whole have delivered strong returns to investors. That should be a lesson for us as we look to long-term investing and the returns that can potentially be delivered over the long term. For us that's a minimum of three to five years, but anywhere beyond that, ideally up to 10, 20, 30."
How the tax on investing works and the benefit of shares ISAs
Money earned through investment returns, like most other forms of income, is subject to tax, usually in one or all of three different ways…
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Capital Gains tax. This is the tax paid when you sell something for more than you bought it for. So buy a fund for £10,000 and sell it for £20,000 and that is a Capital Gain of £10,000. Crucially, it doesn’t matter when you bought it, whether it was a month or a decade ago, the gain is counted in the tax-year that you sold it.
Allowance: You can earn £3,000 per year tax free, after which non-taxpayers don’t pay any (unless your income + capital gains takes you into a higher tax band), basic-rate taxpayers will pay 18% and it's 24% for higher or top rate. -
Dividends tax. Many shares or funds pay dividends. This is an income paid each year often from annual profits.
Allowance: You can earn £500 per year tax free, after which which non-taxpayers don’t pay any (unless it takes you over your personal allowance), basic rate taxpayers will pay 10.75%, higher rate will pay 35.75% and top rate 39.75%. -
Savings tax. This applies to interest on bonds or gilts and also applies to non-investment savings earnings (eg, if you have cash held waiting to invest in an investment account).
Allowance: Best to see our full how savings tax works guide on this as there are a few allowances. However the Personal Savings Allowance means basic rate taxpayers can earn £1,000 per year in savings interest tax free (it's £500 for higher rate and there's no allowance for top rate). After this, you'll be taxed at 20%, 40% or 45%, depending on your tax bracket.
What is a shares ISA?
An ISA is a £20,000 allowance every UK adult (age 18+) gets each tax year, where their savings or investment earnings aren’t taxable. Once in an ISA it stays tax free year after year. So it's now thought that over 5,000 people, most of whom will have maxed out their ISA every year, have over £1,000,000 of investments inside shares ISAs.
Not only are your shares ISA returns tax-free, meaning you won’t pay Capital Gains on any profits, nor dividends tax or savings interest tax on interest… but crucially, as these gains aren’t taxable, they don’t count towards your allowances, so you get them as well.
'If I’m saving and investing, I’d focus on prioritising a shares ISA'
The ISA tax wrapper is particularly useful in the case of shares ISAs because of the nature of investments.
When we invest, it's hoping for a big growth. Let's imagine you put £20,000 in a shares ISA, you were very lucky and that share went up 100 times in the next five years and it's now worth £2m. The capital gains tax would be huge outside an ISA. Inside an ISA, you'd pay no tax at all.
Now, it's rare for that to happen, but the benefit if your shares go up a lot in a shares ISA is so much bigger than the slight benefit you'd get from not paying tax on saving earnings in a cash ISA. If you have a choice between the two, I'd probably hedge on protecting my shares.
This is strengthened by the fact that you pay Capital Gains tax in the year you sold, unlike savings where your gain is usually the annual interest. So within investing you may be crystallising the gain on twenty years worth of growth all in one go, meaning it could easily use up your £3,000 annual allowance, so the ISA protection is vital.
Our how ISAs work guide and shares ISA guide will take you through this in detail.
OK I'm in, I've decided I want to invest... where should I start?
You need to find an investment platform where you can buy funds (or shares, bonds and more). These can either be done via a General Investment Account (GIA) or a shares ISA. They both work exactly the same way, and usually have similar fees for the same funds, they are both just a place you can buy and sell investments, or in the case of Robo investors, they choose the investments for you. The only difference is the tax treatment…
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Stocks & shares ISAs. If you've not yet used up your £20,000 annual ISA allowance for this tax year, then investing this way, as discussed above, protects the growth and income from tax. We've more info and best buys in our Top stocks & shares ISAs guide.
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General investment accounts. These are the same thing without the tax advantages, so if you’re investing more you’ll be using these. More info and best buys in our Funds guide.
There are also great resources on both of these on Boring Money and The Motley Fool. And if you have an Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) or Financial Planner, do talk to them (see below When is it worth me paying for an IFA?).
Most platforms charge account management fees based on a percentage of your investments, you'll also be charged fees when buying the investments themselves, though some newer platforms offer low-cost alternatives. It's important to keep fees to a minimum as they'll eat into your earnings.
You can technically deal directly with fund managers, but bizarrely the investment industry is a strange world where going direct means bigger fees. Many investment accounts discount fees, but you don’t usually get that direct.
“I would never buy direct from a fund manager today, I would go to an investment platform. Then you can shop around. As you get more confident, you can start buying a few more shares, funds and build it out."
As always, all investment will carry some risk – there's no guaranteed returns. It's up to you to do the research, find a risk level you're comfortable with and the investment route will hopefully be a lucrative place to put some of your assets.
Questions and answers from the show
Martin and the specialists on his show answered a variety of the audience's questions. Remember these are from December 2025, and while broad principles do apply, the specifics can and do change…
How much do I need for it to be worth going to an independent financial adviser?
Kate Gannon, Vice President, Personal Finance Society: "For a financial planner – speaking for myself and a lot of people I work with – I would say between £50,000 and £75,000 is a good place to start with, otherwise we’re just too expensive."
If you'd like further information, see our full Financial advisers guide.
Is there an AI bubble and could it cause markets to crash?
James McManus, Chief Investment Officer at JPMorgan Personal Investing: “AI is going to be transformational in all our lives and as investors we think AI is going to be transformational in terms of the competitive dynamics in a lot of industries, in a lot of sectors and for a lot of companies. I think what’s really important there is the lesson to stay diversified.
It’s a reason to spread risk across as many companies as possible. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The other point I’d make is that US companies right now are actually very profitable relative to history, and some of that profitability is coming through from some of the AI advances we’re already seeing.
So I think fears of a bubble, somewhat overblown, but stay diversified, make sure you have exposure to those big, critically important technology companies that are really driving growth in the economy.”
Martin: "And beginners to investing remember, you are investing for the long term. Hopefully it won’t happen, but if the markets were to have a big correction in four weeks time and you just put your money in, you’ll feel awful, but you’re putting your money in for 10 years and it’s where it is after 10 years which matter, not where it is after four weeks."
Is cryptocurrency a worthwhile investment as part of a diversified portfolio?
Martin: “'I’m smiling because Kate and Holly, who I can see from their faces, they don't want to touch this with the barge pole. Do you? They won't touch this question. So James, as part of a diversified portfolio, and what would be a sensible percentage to risk?"
James McManus, Chief Investment Officer at JPMorgan Personal Investing, said: "I absolutely understand the interest in cryptocurrency. It’s a phenomenally innovative part of financial markets and growing very, very quickly. That said, it’s still what we call a speculative asset. A speculative asset is one that will be subject to high volatility, high changes in the price, whether that’s gains but also losses. And so, with a speculative asset, it’s only for the highest risk investors, and even then cryptocurrencies should be only a small part of a high-risk investment portfolio, money you can afford to lose.”
Sarah Pritchard, Deputy Chief Executive at the FCA, said: "Firstly, crypto is high risk. Secondly, it’s largely unregulated. And thirdly, if you invest in crypto, be prepared to lose all your money. If you’re okay with those three things, then that’s fine.”
Martin: "There are people in the past who have bough Bitcoin because they think it’s a great freedom in the Western world and it’s political, or because they believe it’s beating the fiat currency system and they’re buying it as a new form of currency. OR because they bought it under what’s called the 'greater fool' theory, ie they bought it not because they thought much of it, but because they thought a greater fool than them would be willing to buy it in the future for more than they did, so they’d make money from it. And they have made substantial amounts of money. There are crypto billionaires out there. But it is highly speculative and highly risky.
I consider myself a barbell investor. Most of my investments are at a very low end, and I’ve a few that are at a very high end. On the high end stuff it’s all about being prepared to lose your money. Nothing wrong with well planned investment in crypto, as long as you can afford to lose the money. If you put all your savings in it, it’s incredibly risky. "
Is gold considered a better hedge against inflation compared to other forms of savings?
James McManus, Chief Investment Officer at JPMorgan Personal Investing: “Gold is often considered a safe haven, but let’s be clear – it's not riskless by any means. It doesn’t pay an income, it’s undiversified and although it can be an effective inflation hedge, it should only be a small part of a diversified portfolio. That's especially true at the moment where it’s rising 50% year-to-date. And so when an asset rises that quickly, that fast, it’s really important to be cautious about just how much money you put in”
Martin: "The one message to get from here is diversification, not just in the way that a fund diversifies but actually, not having all your eggs in one basket, even if it’s a golden basket."
My wife and I have £20,000 from an inheritance to invest. What’s the best way to do this?
Holly Mackay, CEO of Boring Money: "I think with £20,000 you could look at something called a robo adviser. Robo advisers are online investment accounts, they’re designed for beginners so you don’t really need to know what you’re doing or feel super confident. They ask you 5-10 simple questions and based on your answers, they’ll serve you up a kind of ready-made selection of investments.
So for £20,000 you could look at JPMorgan Personal Investing – they have people on the phones if you’re a bit nervous. You could also look at other options like Vanguard a no frills, low cost, global option. Moneyfarm is another one. For about £20,000 you’d pay around £100 to £130 in fees per year all in."
I've recently inherited £100,000. I won't need it for 10 years. Is it worth getting a financial adviser as I have no clue about investments?
Martin: "For that amount of money and you've got no clue, you probably want to pay for some advice."
Kate Gannon, Vice President, Personal Finance Society:
"It's exactly the sort of person we'd be able to help and we'd be able to walk them through the whole scenario and hold their hand throughout. That's exactly what a financial planner is there for. So we would look and first of all try to use tax allowances. We'd look at ISA allowances and see if she's used one of those. Or if she's working, or even if she's not working, there's the ability to use some pension allowances.
Maybe she's married, then we'll see if her partner's got any unused allowances and if they're comfortable having some of the investments in joint names. As that's very important to consider.
And then it's future plans – what does she want, when does she want it? How does she want it? Does she want income, does she want capital growth and what's her time horizon? And we build all of that and review it on an ongoing basis."
I have £140,000 I want to invest, how should I go about this?
James McManus, Chief Investment Officer at JPMorgan Personal Investing: “£140,000 is a lot of money, but the principles of asset allocation and building a portfolio are the same whether you have £1,000 or hundreds of thousands.
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First, set a goal. Having a clear purpose helps you stay focused when markets get volatile and keeps you thinking long term.
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Next, consider your time horizon. If you’re investing for the long term, you can afford to take more risk with assets like stocks; for a shorter timeframe, you’ll want a greater proportion in less risky assets like bonds.
The key is always to think about the right mix for your situation. Low-risk investors might still hold some stocks, but mostly bonds, while high-risk investors will have a larger share in stocks compared to bonds.”
Beware investment scams
Any advert with Martin in telling you to invest is a scam. Full info in our scams guide, but here's Martin to explain...
"I was worried about covering investing on TV because I appear in more scams than anyone else and because they’re all investment scams. And I don’t advertise investments or usually talk about investments. We have a real problem with scams.
"I would never invest via an advert I’d seen on social media. There are scams of me where you click through to the BBC or Daily Mail or Daily Mirror and see an AI deepfake of me on This Morning telling you about investing.
You should always do detailed research, you should always go through a proper source to a legitimate website – so do your research and follow from there. When you’re clicking on adverts that say get rich quick, that means they can get rich quick and you can get poor quick. Be very, very careful."
Before you invest, check the FCA's firm checker tool
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulates the financial services market and the companies within it. One way to protect yourself from scams is to use its firm checker tool, where you can search for the company you're thinking of investing with and check that it's authorised. You should also check that the details listed on the company's website match those on the FCA's (as some scammers pretend to be legitimate organisations).
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