Investors don’t need to fork out eye-watering sums every month to build a winning shares portfolio. History shows us that the average long-term investor makes an annual return of 8%-10%. Those who take the time to build a sound investment strategy filled with the best UK stocks can make even more.
Let me take that 8% figure to show how regular investment can end up making share pickers a big pot of cash. If I were to invest £500 in a Stocks and Shares ISA every month I could potentially expect to make at least £563,420 after 30 years.
This offers much more potential for me to make glorious returns than a traditional low-yielding savings product like a Cash ISA. Even the best-paying instant-access account doesn’t offer a better interest rate than 0.6% today. I also prefer to buy UK shares than cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin as regulators clamp down on them. I worry about the prices of these new-age currencies going all the way down to zero.
Not that share returns are guaranteed, of course. Stock prices can fall and dividends can be cut, while a historical figure can’t be used to predict the future. But overall, I still see the stock market as a better home for my cash.
A cheap UK stock on my radar
Why take a chance with high-risk assets like cryptocurrencies anyway? As I say, stock markets have a long history of making individuals huge wads of cash. Buying following selloffs can help one supercharge the returns they can make over the long term too.
I believe NCC Group (LSE: NCC) could be one of the best stocks to buy to fight the growing problem of cybercrime. I also think it might be one of the best value shares to buy, following its recent share price fall. City analysts think earnings here will shoot 26% higher this fiscal year (to May 2022). At current prices, this leaves the company trading on a forward price-to-earnings growth (PEG) ratio of just 0.8.
A reminder that a reading below 1 suggests a UK stock could be undervalued. My belief that NCC could now be too cheap for me to miss having been reinforced by the excellent trading release of mid-September. Then the cybersecurity giant said that sales jumped 2.6% in the 12 months to May, a result which pushed pre-tax profit 54.2% higher year-on-year.
Stunning profits growth on the horizon?
As NCC noted in that release: “Cyber resilience is no longer optional for any organisation and has become a board-level issue.” The cybersecurity market was already growing at 8%-9% a year before the outbreak of Covid-19, the company says. I fully expect the sector to grow even faster in the coming years too, given the growth of e-commerce and non-office-based working in the wake of the pandemic.
Okay, NCC operates in a highly-competitive market and it will have to paddle extremely hard to compete with industry giants like Microsoft, Mcafee and FTSE 100-quoted Avast. But I think this threat is more than reflected in the company’s rock-bottom valuation. I think NCC could be one of the best UK tech stocks to buy right now, and particularly at recent prices.
Teresa Kersten, an employee of LinkedIn, a Microsoft subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Royston Wild has no position in any of the shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK owns shares of and has recommended Microsoft. The Motley Fool UK has recommended Avast Plc and NCC. Views expressed on the companies mentioned in this article are those of the writer and therefore may differ from the official recommendations we make in our subscription services such as Share Advisor, Hidden Winners and Pro. Here at The Motley Fool we believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.
This post was originally published on Motley Fool
