It was Christmas 2002 when I stumbled on the PS website and was inspired - always had an interest in property, done Self Build, renovations and was Company Sec for a Property Development company but at this time not having ventured into BTL. Downloaded the PS books and by April 2003 had bought 2 BTL properties. At the same time I enrolled on a highly recommended Stocks 'Trading' course which cost me alot of money, bought numerous books on Trading and joined a group of Traders who met regularly to exchange expertise and experiences. I spent several months running a Dummy Trading account with £10k, made a profit of £3k in 3 mths - nothing spectacular but fairly easy money, so then I went 'Live' with my hard earned cash - different ball game altogether, brings in all sorts of emotions and it really is a dangerous game to be in if you can't 'stand the heat'. Stocks and shares can behave in ways that very few people can predict, sometimes they can wipe you out or make you rich in minutes or hours. I felt is was more like Gambling than Investing. After 4 years I have £1.5 million property portfolio with which has enabled me to give up the 9 till 5 whereas I only lost money on Trading in Stocks and Shares - fortunately I recognised my inadequacies in this area before it cost me too dearly. It would be interesting to hear how others who have experienced both investment vehicles have got on.

I help my elderly mother look after her investments and she is very risk-averse. As this is my inheritance we are playing with, so am I :-) What we have done is invest in guaranteed equity bonds which get us, depending on the bond's other terms, between 80% and 110% any growth in the FTSE100 but no dividends. The key point is that the return of the capital in full at the end of the period is guaranteed. So I feel that we are only gambling the interest we would have got in a high interest accoung over 5 years - not a huge risk as long as the markets don't have another 9/11 in the meantime.

It is just worth adding that there are ethical below market value operators who do genuinely try to find deals that are "Win- Win" for both the "motivated" (read indebted) property seller and for them too. The most typical is the scenario - called Sell and Rent Back - where the seller gets to stay in his property and become a tenant of the landlord. The seller turned tenant can then use the cash to pay off his other debts. Practioners of BMV (ones that I know) who do this say that this is a neat solution for the seller - and is of course, the one solution that the mortgage lender for the indebted seller will not be able to provide. (The lender will of course in the last resort, always seek repossession!!) So, perhaps where, in a previous entry on this forum, I wrote the words "preying on indebted homeowners" was perhaps a bit unfair on the more ethical practitioners of BMV. David Lawrenson Lettingfocus