First plunge with Investment trusts

Thanks for that, that was what I was thinking if I started to drip feed money into Murray International over the long term that the premium/discount would not matter too much.

Understand now that the premium data might be a few days old.

That is my plan for this portfolio along with the other ones is to drip feed them.

I have set Murray International IT for a monthly payment for next month to start it. So with Woodfords Income and City of London, I have set Murray International at around 30% and Woodford and City of London Split 50/50 together at 70%, would this seem a reasonable allocation?

I would be more than happy with these 3 openings to be drip feeding with and that is a simple enough set up for the moment to get me going with this income dividend portfolio. In a while I can decide if I want to open any other income based focus but I am happy to be starting off with these 3 holdings giving UK and Global.

Many thanks!

Well that's the great thing with drip-feeding - the further they plunge, the better value you're buying ... Woke up genuinely disappointed to see the FTSE 100 trading up today (hoping for a decent dip to bump up my shares allocation - but it often comes after a little rally)

takesyourchances wrote: »

Thanks for that, that was what I was thinking if I started to drip feed money into Murray International over the long term that the premium/discount would not matter too much.

Understand now that the premium data might be a few days old.

That is my plan for this portfolio along with the other ones is to drip feed them.

I have set Murray International IT for a monthly payment for next month to start it. So with Woodfords Income and City of London, I have set Murray International at around 30% and Woodford and City of London Split 50/50 together at 70%, would this seem a reasonable allocation?

I would be more than happy with these 3 openings to be drip feeding with and that is a simple enough set up for the moment to get me going with this income dividend portfolio. In a while I can decide if I want to open any other income based focus but I am happy to be starting off with these 3 holdings giving UK and Global.

Many thanks!

Hope they prove to be good investments!

Personally, I might be tempted to go a little higher on Murray - with a strong sterling, we've got quite good buying power on foreign shares ... So when sterling drops, that could see foreign investments getting a little extra bump ... I'd maybe go 1 part each: Woodford, CTY, Murray

As far as an Income portfolio goes, I'm not sure you could pick 3 more highly regarded funds ... Newton Asian Income is my other favourite in the income sector

I put another bit into Woodfords income fund so I am adjusting for CTY and Murray IT for the drip feed for next month.

@Ryan, I was thinking at least 40% Murray now or on 3 openings would it be easier to manage UK Income (Woodford & CTY) and Global Income (Murray) at 50/50?

With the market movements I will be drip feeding away and not trying to time anything and catch the lows and highs as the markets move.

Ryan_Futuristics wrote: »

Amazing how well Woodford's been holding up under these market conditions - that's what he's famous for though!

Actually I'm torn with Murray, because the premium is high ... Some would say it's only a buying opportunity when it's at least below its average ... So I want to increase my allocation, but I'm holding off until it dips - still drip-feeding into it, but it's only 20% of my portfolio at present

The rest of my international portfolio is where I look for undervalued regions

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/investing/article-2738966/How-use-CAPE-beat-market-global-CAPE-values.html
http://www.starcapital.de/research/stockmarketvaluation

It's more of a long-term strategy, and it's considered riskier - because you're buying what no one wants - and you'd need to do a lot of reading and research, but my own feeling is that with global growth uncertain in the future, value investing may be where the best returns come from

So I'm (at the moment) mainly buying these three funds: 1 part Sanditon European, 0.85 parts Lazard Emerging Markets, 0.15 parts JPM New Europe ... This gives me exposure to most of the cheapest regions ... These funds are all very vulnerable to global market conditions ... The idea is to annually adjust your asset allocation to stay invested in the cheapest regions (lower allocations to regions as they grow and become fair value), and long-term this *may* prove to be a reasonable strategy - at least you're buying cheap ... So that's what I do apart from just Murray

And you may want to consider holding some trackers (a FTSE All Share and a Global ex-UK) - personally I find them a bit boring, but there is a whole school of thought that disagrees with me! And I can't guarantee they're not right

Yes it is indeed with Woodford the fund has held up under these rocky conditions at the moment so far, I put some more in while waiting on the drip feed date next month as I had some spare cash sitting and got more at just below the launch price so it gets me started.

I see the premium has floated up on Murray, so I will just drip feed this. Maybe I should keep the UK Income allocation a bit higher than Murray for the moment and drip feed in to start and see how things go. The main thing is to get it underway and I can adjust as I go along. If I am not going as high on Murray to start with I could maybe add 10% or so to Newton Asian Income as a possibility. .

Thanks for the links on CAPE, I will have a read at those. It is not something I really know much about to be honest so I will read into CAPE, although I understand the value point ok and the out of flavor and unloved sectors so to speak .

Long term holds, I can see the potential in some European regions etc. I have property in Europe so know all about the currency fluctuation over the last lot of years with Euro, although thankfully I own my overseas properties outright.

I have core global tracker focus in my S&S ISA and SIPP with the Vanguard life strategy trackers. I see there has been mixed opinions on trackers recently on the boards, however I mainly got into this type of investing towards 2 years ago and the VLS suited me with the auto re balancing and global coverage in one holding, although trackers can be quite boring I am mainly passive and long term focused and added fund focus around the edges on what interested me for the long term.

In my S&S ISA as satellite holdings I have small companies (UK, Global, Asia) and Asian focus and emerging markets for long term growth potentials. I am not thinking of the short term with these but long term so expect swings up and down, which has of course happened at times.

My SIPP is solely VLS 80%, although as we mentioned before with infrastructure, First State has been on my mind for this at 5% and maybe I could add in a long term value fund, maybe Europe etc. I may float a few funds around this eventually. .

That is my tracker coverage and I don't think or time them, I just add every month and the fund and shares account will be for the Income portfolio underway here with Woodford and the Investment Trusts after researching a lot into these lately.

I still have plenty to learn and doing my best to do so and plugging away so to speak

takesyourchances wrote: »

Yes it is indeed with Woodford the fund has held up under these rocky conditions at the moment so far, I put some more in while waiting on the drip feed date next month as I had some spare cash sitting and got more at just below the launch price so it gets me started.

I see the premium has floated up on Murray, so I will just drip feed this. Maybe I should keep the UK Income allocation a bit higher than Murray for the moment and drip feed in to start and see how things go. The main thing is to get it underway and I can adjust as I go along. If I am not going as high on Murray to start with I could maybe add 10% or so to Newton Asian Income as a possibility. .

Thanks for the links on CAPE, I will have a read at those. It is not something I really know much about to be honest so I will read into CAPE, although I understand the value point ok and the out of flavor and unloved sectors so to speak .

Long term holds, I can see the potential in some European regions etc. I have property in Europe so know all about the currency fluctuation over the last lot of years with Euro, although thankfully I own my overseas properties outright.

I have core global tracker focus in my S&S ISA and SIPP with the Vanguard life strategy trackers. I see there has been mixed opinions on trackers recently on the boards, however I mainly got into this type of investing towards 2 years ago and the VLS suited me with the auto re balancing and global coverage in one holding, although trackers can be quite boring I am mainly passive and long term focused and added fund focus around the edges on what interested me for the long term.

In my S&S ISA as satellite holdings I have small companies (UK, Global, Asia) and Asian focus and emerging markets for long term growth potentials. I am not thinking of the short term with these but long term so expect swings up and down, which has of course happened at times.

My SIPP is solely VLS 80%, although as we mentioned before with infrastructure, First State has been on my mind for this at 5% and maybe I could add in a long term value fund, maybe Europe etc. I may float a few funds around this eventually. .

That is my tracker coverage and I don't think or time them, I just add every month and the fund and shares account will be for the Income portfolio underway here with Woodford and the Investment Trusts after researching a lot into these lately.

I still have plenty to learn and doing my best to do so and plugging away so to speak

I think you're right to keep UK Eq Income on the high side - I'm doing the same, and it's being echoed as a robust choice in these market conditions by a fair few commentators - and I've moved extra into Woodford and my other funds mid-week (good buying opportunity)

I'm actually running simulations at the moment of something that might make a considerable difference to returns ... There are two ways to drip-feed ... A regular amount each month, or try and drip feed more when the market's down

And a simple way to do that second is to "buy the difference from the peak" ... So if the FTSE 100 peak is around 6900, then when it's down at 6300, you should buy £600 worth of shares, and when it's up at 6850, you should only top up by £50 ... Still doing it monthly (and you could use any multiplication to scale the amount you're putting in)

Buying Woodford, as opposed to a simple index, it obviously won't correlate quite the same ... So maybe you'd use Woodford's own peak value, or just use the index as a rough guide ... But in tests I've been doing, after a number of market cycles, returns have been much higher

There are potential problems with it (like what you'd do if markets kept rising and you weren't buying in enough, or a huge free fall, and how much you'd want to shovel in, or a long global recession) but it's an interesting concept

TCA wrote: »

Ryan, looking at the new European fund, there appears to be a large percentage of holdings in countries where the CAPE seems a bit on the high side. i.e. Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden make up over 40% of the fund. I suppose France, Italy and Spain are the bulk of the remainder so a worthwhile trade-off?

Yeah, I did a CAPE breakdown on it and it's about 30% bottom quarter of CAPE, 40% lower quartile (with the UK and France), and about 15% each upper middle and high CAPE ... So it's not as exposed to low CAPE regions as Neptune European Opportunities

But of course that doesn't tell you whether they're picking particularly undervalued companies in the higher CAPE regions - sometimes the Morningstar portfolio breakdown paints a very different picture from a simple regional breakdown (but sometimes it's very close) ... Lazard Emerging's got quite a lot of high CAPE regions, but its average P/E in the portfolio was below 10

It also uses a business cycle approach, which I don't fully understand, so I think there's a philosophy at work in picking more robust (probably higher value) companies in market declines, and rotating more into value at market bottoms

Neptune Euro Ops is interesting, being more exposed to undervalued regions than any other mainland Europe fund I've found ... It's had lacklustre performance for about 5 years (I think trailing the index), but if you look over 10 years, it's about the third best performing European fund ... So that might be telling (but then the current manager's only been in 10 years, so it's a tough one to call)

What I'm doing is mixing my Euro expose between Sanditon and JPMorgan New Europe (a truly low CAPE fund, with exposure to Russia, Poland, Hungary, etc), and I'm using a bit of Schroder Italian to bump Italy up, and I might use a tiny bit of Neptune

It's a real hack, when buying regional ETFs would give you much more control (but the ETF route seems prohibitively expensive for us in the UK)