Investment Strategy

Investing in shares should be seen as a long term commitment
I would recommend that the minimum amount you invest is £800.00 if you can do that every month great if not save until you can. It may take you several months. The reason for this is that you will have to pay a service fee and commission every time you trade. If you only put in a few hundred pounds then your average cost per share will be higher and so it follows that the price will have to increase more before you make a profit.
I would also recommend that to start with you don’t invest more than say £1500.00 in any one share.

You should always try to have a mixed bag of investments from companies operating in different sectors. Its all very well having lots of Oil related companies in your portfolio when the price of oil is high but when it falls your whole investment will fall whereas if you also had say banking, transport, food, drugs then overall the oil price drop would have less impact in fact it could be neutralized because you may have investments in companies where a dropped oil price has a positive impact. {airlines, logistics}
I am currently have share in over 30 companies.

Are you looking for growth or are you looking at shares that pay a regular dividend.
I would recommend that you have a mixture of both.

Be very careful of forums that discuss shares many posts in these sites are from people who have bought shares that have fallen in price and are desperate to encourage others to do the same in the hope that it may have some impact on the share price.