Stocks and Shares ISA Help newbie

chris1905

Totally new to all this but I have been lurking here and other forums over the past few months trying to sort my ISA's out.

I have stocks and shares ISA's with Halifax and one that was a PEP with Virgin both have performed awfully to be honest I rang and got a valuation yesterday:

Virgin £4575 (£4000 invested in 99'!)
Halifax £3400 (3000 invested in 04')

I realise things have been taking a dive but I really think things could have been much better so I have been looking at transfering them to a Vantage ISA with Hargreaves Lansdown and just want some pointers to how things work.
Can they transfer both those into one Vantage ISA?
When you have the Vantage set up can you move your investments between funds when you want to try and get the best returns and are there costs involved with chopping and changing?

Any help would be greatly appreciated
Ps I also have a fair amount in a cash ISA with Halifax that I'm going to move to the Shipton 1yr fixed I think been as Halifax is paying a measly 5%! I really should have sorted all this sooner but better late than never I guess.

dunstonh

Halifax doesnt surprise me as most of their funds are pretty awful. Virgin is mainly trackers so performance will be sector average on a FTSE all share tracker but would have been poor with a FTSE100 tracker.

I have been looking at transfering them to a Vantage ISA with Hargreaves Lansdown

Do you think that will make a difference? For example, pick the Virgin funds in the HL ISA and you would have got identical performance.

Can they transfer both those into one Vantage ISA?

yes

When you have the Vantage set up can you move your investments between funds when you want to try and get the best returns and are there costs involved with chopping and changing?

yes you can and no.

However, I do have concerns about whether you would know about how to get the best returns and wouldnt end up switching around when its not the fund but the sector. My reasoning for that it is that you havent once mentioned the investments in your post.

chris1905

Thanks for the reply,

However, I do have concerns about whether you would know about how to get the best returns and wouldnt end up switching around when its not the fund but the sector. My reasoning for that it is that you havent once mentioned the investments in your post.

You are probably right in that I don't know how to get the best returns but I'm sure I could find something to get me better and more stable returns than the above funds.

As I say I'm new to all this and have been trying to gather as much info as possible on funds to go for then read up on those funds but I admit I haven't got the skills as yet to build a portfollio to match my risk which I would say is on the cautious side.

The thing I don't want to do is leave the money were it is doing nothing but dropping down (at the moment) am I right in saying you can hold the money as cash in the Vantage ISA why you decide what to invest into?

So far my thoughts are I would like to keep a reasonable chunk say 60-70% in things like Blackrock UK Absolute Alpha and maybe Cru Investment Portfolio then split the rest between some more riskier options to give the chance of a better return (with higher risks of course)

As I say I have a lot more research to do before I can choose the funds to invest in but any pointers, comments would be appreciated.

savingpennies

I would check out Halifax's fixed rates - my husband transferred his ISA to the fixed at 6.3%.

dunstonh

You cannot transfer stocks and share ISAs into a Cash ISA.

jamesd

chris1905, both the Halifax and Virgin options are likely to be charging more than you'd be paying for comparable investments purchased via Hargreaves Lansdown so that part of your plan makes sense.

Those Blackrock and Cru funds are nice enough choices for now. Once the markets start to pick up again you might want to consider adjusting the percentages.

No reason to worry about the cash ISA transfer. Doing something about it beats continuing not to, so you're on the right track.

chris1905

Thanks jamesd,
Does anyone know if I can just hold the cash in the Vantage isa till I decide what funds to buy?

Lokolo

Yes you can.

chris1905

I'm sure I have read somewhere that you can say for example put £3000 into Blackrock UK Absolute then buy £500 in another and £250 in another fund using money from the Blackrock fund meaning you get around the £1000 min investment in each fund is that correct?
So you end up with:
£2250 Blackrock
£500 Other fund
£250 Other fund

If this is correct are there any downsides, fee's wise, to it?
I did have had a chat with them about the Vantage isa today and they were a bit vague about this (probably as I didn't explain it very well, I hope this post makes sense!)

jamesd

Yes, you can do that with sell split instructions where you sell some quantity or value of one holding and use the proceeds to buy up to five others.

For a unit trust like UK Absolute Alpha there's a small spread between buy and sell prices, so you lose a little of the money. For example, I paid 1.163 to buy on 14 March when the sell price for that day was 1.161. That's an initial cost due to buy-sell spread of 0.17% or £1.27 for a £750 split. Not particularly bad as dealing costs go but worth knowing about it.

You won't see the same cost on an OEIC when HL refunds the full initial charge. But most OEICs have a risk of greater price changes between buy and sell days.

chris1905

Thanks for that! so it seems I would be better off putting a larger chunk in Blackrock then use some of this to choose some riskier funds to put small amounts in as a bit of a gamble.
All I need to do know is some serious research into the main funds to invest into to get a good spread. Any things you think I should be looking into at the moment?