Vanguard Lifestrategy funds - performance?

gadgetmind wrote: »

Lump sum is best if you have a lump sum. If your money arrives steadily, then investing steadily is better than waiting until you have a lump sum. (Ignoring dealing costs)

Ah, but how do you measure this? For instance, some of the best investments that I've ever made have been in companies on p/e ratios that would make your nose bleed!

A high p/e can be okay if it's a company with great growth and earnings potential, maybe brand and intellectual property too (that's not going to show up in metrics)

I find PEGD a useful quick check - P/E ratio divided by (forecast growth + dividend) ... So if a company's on a P/E of 25, but the estimated long-term growth is 40%, and it's paying a 10% dividend, then that's a PEGD ratio of 0.5 (anything under 0.75 is probably good value) ... or there are Piotroski scores and Graham numbers

An overvalued stock can just keep rising (Apple is probably on quite a premium), but I find if you're not basing decisions roughly on company fundamentals, you leave more room for error ... e.g. How do you know when to sell? ... I try and avoid judgement calls because I tend to get them wrong as often as right

Yes... going back to the original post,

I was also looking at investing with VLS back in Feb 2013 as my Halifax ISA interest rate was about to be reduced to 0.05%. I did as much research as I could as a novice and in the end I decided to go with Fundsmith rather than VLS, mainly after watching Terry Smiths shareholder meetings and introduction videos on Youtube.

I invested direct, in the T class (acc) fund (incredibly easy to do) and performance has been spectacular I think.

This year (2014) has seen a 25.3% increase and last year 23.18%. Anyone who bought in when the fund was launched in Nov 2010 has seen the value of their investment more than double (103% increase)