It’s time to wish happy birthday to Shares as an online-only publication. It’s been a year since we stopped printing the magazine and switched to the digital world.

I’m happy to say it has been a very successful 12 months as reader numbers have gone up and we’ve been able to help even more people improve their investing skills.

I hope you enjoy the digital publication and that it continues to help you understand the world of investing; demystifies the stock market; and provides a continuous stream of investing ideas.

Ongoing improvements

Over the past year we’ve increased our coverage of the funds and investment trust market; sharpened our focus on longer-term investing; and boosted the daily commentary we provide on a range of subjects via the Shares website.

Many of you have already told us which parts of the digital magazine and website you like best, as well as the areas in which we could do better, as per two reader surveys over the past few months.

If you didn’t participate in a reader survey, I’d still like to hear your thoughts on how we can make Shares an even better read. Email yourviews@sharesmagazine.co.uk with the subject line ‘Reader feedback’ and let me know which parts of the magazine and website you really like and areas you’d like us to cover in more detail, or perhaps add if we don’t already cover them.

Investing is growing in popularity

Recent figures from the taxman, the HMRC, show that stocks and shares ISAs are growing in popularity with 2.589m people putting money in the investment version of the tax-efficient wrapper in the tax year ending 5 April 2017. In comparison, the number of stocks and shares ISA accounts with monetary inflows was lower in the previous year at 2.539m.

Interestingly, there was the reverse of this trend with cash ISAs where the number of accounts with new monetary subscriptions fell from 10.118m in 2015/16 to 8.48m a year later.

What this tells me is that more people are being drawn to the stock market in search of a higher return on their money as the rates on cash accounts continue to be so poor.

The flip side is that an increase in people using stocks and shares ISAs could increase the risk that people put money into unsuitable investments as many will be picking stocks or funds at random.

Our role as education provider

We recognise at Shares that many people using stocks and shares ISAs aren’t experts when it comes to investing. That’s why we place such a strong emphasis on education in the digital magazine, helping both the inexperienced and the more seasoned investor.

Our purpose is to provide guidance with choosing investments as well as managing a portfolio; but note that we do not provide investment advice.

If you’re hungry for help with investing, why not head to our website and look at our rich archive of investment-related articles where we have issues of the weekly magazine going back to 2004.

I would like to say thank you for continuing to read Shares and here’s to the next 12 months and beyond as your trusted source of investing information.

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