Jupiter Financial Opportunities Fund

mr_fishbulb

Hargreaves Lansdown have been pimping this fund recently and I've been a little tempted to part with an extra £50 per month and start investing in this one.

Pound cost average for a year or two whilst the volitility of the financial sector is still high and then hopefully see the benefit when the sector gets some stability back.

Am I just falling for their hype, or does anyone else think this might be a good idea?

opinions4u

Might work but:

1) Cost of preference shares dividend at 12% is high.
2) Opportunity for housing market lead growth restricted by wholesale funding issues.
3) Little or no ordinary dividends.
4) A £17bn hole in the FSCS that the banks have to maintain the interest on and potentially repay the capital for in the future.

Given my own exposure I hope they recover, but don't think any growth will be massive once things have stabilised.

cloud_dog

FWIW, I have made an investment in this fund and continued with a monthly investment.

My reason for this was that the fund manager started to go to a significant cash position at the back end of 2007 and still has approx 27% cash and 30% in bonds (which I expect him to start moving out of - obviously he knows more than I do).

To me this means he is in a fairly good position to make strategic investments going forward. If you look at the funds performance its fallen about 22% from its height (1st half 2007) which is pretty good in these cicumstances and is largely due to his cash position.

So, there's me logic, take it or leave it

EDIT: Also, the bottom line is that longer term financials will come good, I don't think the world can function in any shape without finacial institutions greasing the wheels (so to speak).

cloud_dog

purch

Am I just falling for their hype

Yes

Pound Cost Averaging should not be used as an Investment Method....it should be viewed as merely a potentially beneficial (or not) by-product of monthly investing.

If you think this sector, and this Fund is a good area to buy into then do it.

If not don't.

Research it properly....don't just do so cos Dampier (the expert who called Russia the best market to invest in in 2008) says so.


The "I've no idea...but hope" method usually fails.

Old_Slaphead

purch wrote: »

Research it properly....

I'm just yer 'average Joe' with an interest in money, reads the press, listens to what the so called 'experts' say (and treats most of it with a good deals of scepticism) and checks out facts presented on websites like Trustnet etc.

Given that in a perfect market, the sum of all know information should be factored into the share (and hence unit/investment trust) price - what else can or should be done to 'research it properly' - given that most price movements are affected by sentiment or other non company performance-related factors ?

ozzage

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

I'm just yer 'average Joe' with an interest in money, reads the press, listens to what the so called 'experts' say (and treats most of it with a good deals of scepticism) and checks out facts presented on websites like Trustnet etc.

Given that in a perfect market, the sum of all know information should be factored into the share (and hence unit/investment trust) price - what else can or should be done to 'research it properly' - given that most price movements are affected by sentiment or other non company performance-related factors ?

Good post. I think about this myself. How can we realistically do research which is better or more complete than somebody like Dampier's? There's a lot of advice saying "do your research" which makes perfect sense... but what research!?!?

I've invested (just started though) based on what I have a bit of knowledge of - South East Asia, China, Australia but this is not anything concrete. I think that in the long-term that part of the world will grow a lot, and that Australia has a fundamentally strong economy right now. That's not research though, it's just what I think!

The "I've no idea...but hope" method usually fails.

What else is there, in reality? Will we honestly, with any amount of research, know more than Dampier and his ilk who have years of experience and whose job it is to know about things like this.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the so-called "experts" will always get it right - quite the contrary - but is your average private investor really likely to do much better with any amount of research?

If so, WHAT?!?!

purch

what else can or should be done to 'research it properly'

If so, WHAT?!?!

Post #2 and Post #3 are two examples of people who have done a wee bit of research in to the subject.

What I was saying is Investing in anything just on the advice/opinion/hype of anyone else, be they a supposed expert, or a bloke down the Pub is a bad way to go about it.

If you don't have a clear reason behind buying an Investment how are you going to know what to do in the future when that Investment has risen or fallen in value.

You need a good well thought out reason to;
A) Buy
Sell
C) Hold

and if the only reason for A) was the advice/opinion/hype of someone else, then how are you going to know when to do or C) ?? cos A) is always the easy bit...........B) and C) are usually much more difficult.

ozzage

OK that's a fair response. Now I'm going to try to find all that information myself and try to understand the train of thought which led to their conclusions.

My level of knowledge is not high enough to understand the consequences of everything immediately but I guess it has to be if I want to DIY my investments!

Thanks.

Old_Slaphead

purch wrote: »

Post #2 and Post #3 are two examples of people who have done a wee bit of research in to the subject.

In the case of #3 it's not exactly "researching it properly" is it.

That's basic fund breakdown info from somewhere like HLwebsite - I assume most/all interested investors do that level of research.

Personally, if my fund manager had moved to 50% cash/bonds last year then, if I concurred with his view, I would have seen it as a sign to go the whole hog and get out of the fund completely.

Back to the original statement - what is researching it properly to Mr/Ms Average?

cloud_dog

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

In the case of #3 it's not exactly "researching it properly" is it.

That's basic fund breakdown info from somewhere like HLwebsite - I assume most/all interested investors do that level of research.

And up yours you old slappy

At a fund level you are correct but, I could have gone on to say I've reasearched the manager (ranked him against his peers), the fund against its peers (previous performance), looked at its equity investments, (i.e. who, small cap, large cap), geographical breakdown BUT, as you say this is the sort of research all investors do (?????? - not sure it is unfortunately).

Additionally, perhaps you should have asked / considered why was I looking at a financials based fund - reasearch again.

To answer your question................... There isn't an answer you would be happy with. The bottom line is Do you feel comfortable with your investment choice?, if you don't then continue researching until you do. BUT, back to square one - What do you want to know to feel comfortable?

cloud_dog

Old_Slaphead

cloud_dog wrote: »

And up yours you old slappy

To answer your question................... There isn't an answer you would be happy with.

cloud_dog

Try me.

I'm only trying to find out what sort of "research" I should be doing to improve my stock/investment picking skills.

I've applied all the criteria you've used but my last 3 funds invested in were run by the well respected Dr Mott, David Mitchinson and Patrick Evershed. These were highly rated managers but unfortunately they have bombed with their last retail investment charges (well the one's that I'm aware of).