Take a peek at my hand?
Comments
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Bowlhead99, you always strike me as warm hearted and generous with intelligent advice. I have taken this on board:
“IMHO, a philosophy of 60% equity (half in broad ETFs) and 40% in a range of cash, bonds, commodities, real estate and other strategies etc etc etc, and letting that 60:40 split and the broad index coverage trump everything, is not fundamentally flawed.”
Linton. I want to have a healthy pot of investments to rub along with a house and a defined benefit pension when I retire. Between 10 and 20 years. 60% in equities and 40% in less volatile investments. Backbone global and UK index ETFs.
Thrugelmir. Yes that’s exactly it. A number of “individual punts” balanced with passive ETFs.
Coyrls, yes- imposing a limit of 3 trades per quarter, it will take some steady adjustments to reduce the chaos
Quarter 1 2015
I raided (literally drained) the piggy bank and transferred in the remainder of allowance to S&S ISA accounts. Then, I rebalanced to 60% equities by buying VWRL, Vanguard’s global equity tracker. I did this rather than look for a NASDAQ tracker after chewing over the comments above. Decided to hang on to TESCO a bit longer. So this quarter I only made 2 trades.
Top 10 holdings 31/3/15:
Cash 28.7%
TESCO PLC 14.5%
VWRL Vanguard FTSE All World ETF 12.0%
VUKE Vanguard FTSE UK Equty Index Acc 9.3%
ETC - DOW JONES-UBS ALUMINUM SUBINDEX 7.5%
ISHARES FTSE BRIC 50 4.3%
GLOBAL X FUNDS FTSE GREECE 20 ETF 3.8%
ETFS - Brent Oil 1 month USD 3.8%
GAMESA CORPORACION TECNOLOGIA 3.7%
ELECTRICITE DE FRANCE 3.3%
These form 91% of the portfolio which is worth £116,334.
60% Equities, 29% cash, 11% commodities.
All advice and pointers gratefully received , thankyou0 -
Just interested to know, did you have specific reason to have individual ETFs for some commodities rather than a commodities fund, whether active or passive?
E.g. why hold an aluminium ETF instead of, say, Lyxor ETF Commodities (CRBL), for example?0 -
Just interested to know, did you have specific reason to have individual ETFs for some commodities rather than a commodities fund, whether active or passive?
E.g. why hold an aluminium ETF instead of, say, Lyxor ETF Commodities (CRBL), for example?
Hi omnirife. My reasoning was that Aluminium and oil have become cheaper recently. Take aluminium: either Aluminium will stay cheaper forever, or there will be reversion to the mean. So I guess it was a punt (to use that term again) on there being reversion to the mean at some time in the future.
So far it is going rather badly but there is time.0 -
racing_blue wrote: »Either Aluminium will stay cheaper forever, or there will be reversion to the mean. So I guess it was a punt (to use that term again) on there being reversion to the mean at some time in the future.
The USGS noted "Domestic resources of bauxite are inadequate to meet long-term U.S. demand, but the United States and most other major aluminum-producing countries have essentially inexhaustible subeconomic resources of aluminum in materials other than bauxite"
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/bauxite/mcs-2015-bauxi.pdf
So, the fact that Jag are going to be using more aluminium in the next XF than they had in the old one, won't necessarily be raising the world price to where it was at the peak of a commodities boom.0 -
Bowlhead - wow. Commodities traders probably analyse these details to the nth degree before making their calls. That's not me. In these investments I'm just looking for a simple balance of probability that in the future they will be worth more. Buy below mean, sell above.
I'm not blind to the risks though - for example misinterpreting a commodity as cyclical when in fact it is getting ever cheaper to produce, or less useful. Or the risks that the ETF may underperform or fail. Or the opportunity cost of not investing in something with a dividend or yield. Or...0 -
racing_blue wrote: »“you are no Warren Buffet”, “that lot’s going to Hell in a handcart”- and the like. Please feel free to slap me with a wet fish for buying £10,000 of aluminium, I still cannot recall exactly why but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Erm, yes..... the only thing I've got to add to those soundbites is ...
Good Luck.
Rather you than me with that portfolio. :eek:
I think you need to work on your decision-making process. Do some paper trading, take a piece of paper, pretend you had £850k instead of £85k. Write down your choices, decision-process and buy prices. How do things look after a month, three months etc ? Maybe take multiple pieces of paper so you can experiment with different processes.
You don't need to be a guru analyst, you don't need to spend your life pouring over annual returns, afterall even the best make mistakes and cannot foresee all risks (e.g. Buffet and Tesco). What you do need to do is find a way to get to a point where you can confidently press the "buy" button, be in with a reasonable chance of things going in your favour, and more importantly have a good idea what your downside risk could be.
You also need to decide what sort of portfolio you want to run, conservative, balanced or aggressive.
Oh, and for gods sake get rid of some of the riskier stuff in your portfolio before it comes to bite you in the backside... with only £85k to play with, you don't have much breathing space for mistakes before serious capital erosion kicks in.0 -
I'm a glutton for punishment so am carrying on this investment diary theme. Here is my plan for quarter 2, 2015, hit me with it.
Commodities are near a 10 year low & I'm liking Ominirife's suggestion at the moment - thanks- may well invest in this commodity ETF.
Also, I'm hoping to nail the passive:active split of equities by selling a large % of my TESCO shares and buying a global cap-weighted equity ETF.
That would be 3 trades - my quarterly limit- and I would not plan to look at my portfolio again until July.
Intended asset allocation:
Cash 20%
Commodities etc 20%
Global Equity ETF 30%
Individual shares 30%
Question: is there a better global equity ETF than VWRL (TER 0.25%)? Is it unwise to have 30% of portfolio in a single ETF like this?0 -
racing_blue wrote: »Question: is there a better global equity ETF than VWRL (TER 0.25%)? Is it unwise to have 30% of portfolio in a single ETF like this?
There has been a lot of commentary recently on the Monevator blog, after a former hedge-fund manager named Lars Kroijer posted his suggestions for a two fund portfolio split between a whole-world position and a single gov bond fund.
There is discussion of various fund and ETF options available here:
http://monevator.com/how-to-chooose-total-world-equity-trackers/
I see that the Fidelity all-world has an OCF/TER charge of 0.2%, which seems rather attractive. If you have a broker which doesn't charge for trading funds, this might be worthwhile.0 -
Another global equity ETF is PSRW: 50bp TER, but it’s weighted on fundamentals rather than market cap0
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Update #2: Quarter 2, 2015.
I Introduced some money and made no withdrawals. Sold some Tesco. Bought Circle Holdings (2% of portfolio), Hellenic Carriers (2% of portfolio), Zoopla property(2% of portfolio). That was 4 trades, so 1 more than I planned. But as I only traded twice in quarter 1, that feels OK.
Maintained asset allocation, pretty much:
Cash 25%
Commodities 21%
Stock market ETFs 26%
individual companies 28%
Here are the top 10 holdings:
Cash, 24.9%
VWRL Vanguard FTSE All World ETF, 14.2%
Lyxor ETF Commodities TR/Jeffries CRB C GBP, 9.0%
ETC - DOW JONES-UBS ALUMINUM SUBINDEX, 7.1%
TESCO PLC, 6.2%
GAMESA CORPORACION TECNOLOGIA EUR0.17, 4.6%
ISHARES FTSE BRIC 50, 4.6%
ETFS - Brent Oil 1 month USD, 4.2%
GLOBAL X FUNDS FTSE GREECE 20 ETF, 3.6%
SAINSBURY(J), 3.6%
ELECTRICITE DE FRANCE EUR0.5, 3.2%
- These 10 holdings make up 82% of portfolio.
Markets are down this quarter. My Greek fund and Aluminium ETF suck big time but they were risky punts and so be it. Maybe they will recover. Gamesa and Sainsbury did well but who knows, they could drop like stones tomorrow. I'm sleeping easy because in a way this is racehorse money. The horses being my early mortgage repayment, the kids' university tuition, and early retirement. Day to day survival doesn't depend on this & if necessary I can always lower my retirement expectations or set the kids to sweeping chimneys.
Thanks for reading.
Collingbone: in my head I know you are right, but in my heart I have to meddle. Hope 3 trades per Q and a fixed asset allocation limits the potential for own goals.
Davide691: Thanks I looked at these weighted trackers. Could see a place for them as the "value" part of a portfolio.0
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