New Year Quiz

whiteflag_3

1 INVESCO PERPETUAL High Income
2 INVESCO PERPETUAL Corporate Bond
3 INVESCO PERPETUAL Mnthly Income Plus
4 Investec Cautious Managed
5 INVESCO PERPETUAL Income
6 Jupiter Merlin Growth Portfolio
7 JPM Natural Resources Fund
8 Jupiter Merlin Income Portfolio
9 Schroder UK Mid250
10 Newton Higher Income
11 Fid FIF Special Situations Fund

Ive listed some ISA funds above and wondered if anyone can guess where the list comes from!

I think the answer reveals alot about how people invest

Paul_Herring

Well a Google for url="http://www.google.com/search?num=100&complete=1&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22Fid+FIF+Special+Situations+Fund%22+%22Schroder+UK+Mid250%22+Newton&btnG=Search"]"Fid FIF Special Situations Fund" "Schroder UK Mid250" Newton[/url only returns one document:

http://www.allenbridge.co.uk/pdfs/Fidelity_FundsNetwork_KF.pdf

Not sure what it's meant to signify though?

cheerfulcat

Most popular funds? Popular because they have done well in the past?

whiteflag_3

Thanks for your replys guys

The list shows the most popular funds invested on the biggest funds supermarket last year .

What I think is interesting is that despite all the talk on portfolio planning, diversification etc most people end up investing with the name they feel most comfortable with and on past performance .

my own firms list is very different!

dunstonh

I have used 5 of that list over the last 3 years, although only 4 of them used for current new business.

carnet

I think the list just illustrates that most "investors" (a) suffer from the herd instinct (b) do insufficient, if any, independent research and (c) take a very (overly ?) cautious investment stance.

Only one of the list makes it into my current portfolio and, having increased by 120% since being purchased, is now being considered for sale.

whiteflag_3

carnet wrote:

I think the list just illustrates that most "investors" (a) suffer from the herd instinct (b) do insufficient, if any, independent research and (c) take a very (overly ?) cautious investment stance.

Only one of the list makes it into my current portfolio and, having increased by 120% since being purchased, is now being considered for sale.

I think the bulk of the investments would be made via IFAs. Therefore it would appear many IFAs are inclined to (a) (b) and (c) above.

al_yrpal

The list shows very little exposure to the wider world, except through the foreign activities of British businesses. Reading various investment forums over the last few months it is clear that most people don't wish to know about anything foreign as they consider it too risky.
The Money sections of newspapers are wholly paid for by the adverts, and the journalists who write for them push these sort of funds all the time. Its called back scratching. I can see why IFA's push them too - its low risk, and retains clients.

For those of us who like living more dangerously, its comforting to know you are definately on your own.

dunstonh

Two friends I know from my tied days have just gone independent. I find myself having to tell them things that they ought to know, even as tied agents.

What is scary is that I was trying to explain sector based investing to one of them and he didnt know what investment sectors were. However, the point related to this post is that he said that until he got the hang with things he would stick to what he reads others are recommending. No doubt his recommendations in future will be very much based on the top 10 there.

I understand that tied financial advisors wouldnt have any investment knowledge because they are not authorised to give investment fund recommendations. However, this surely has to be a shortcoming in the authorisation rules in that a tied agent can become an IFA and go out and see people with no improvement in knowledge required. There ought to be an investment module that needs to be taken and passed for anyone wanting to move from tied to independent.

whiteflag_3

It might also be as a result of the fear of regulation/litigation etc that IFAs choose the safe option - by choosing 5star/aaa rated funds leaves you with a bit of a defence if the proverbial hits the fan.

In other words the fear of complaints lead them to middle of the road recommendations.

We have spent alot of money on asset allocation tools to back recomendations / cover our backsides, howevr Im not sure all of our clients/introducers appreciate the extra efforts we go to try an avoid giving being run of the mill advice

carnet

I receive a great deal of investment bumf (sorry, recommendations ) from quite large IFA firms/Discount brokers and, if it wasn't so sad in that many inexperienced investors base their decisions and put up their hard-earned on the strength of these, it would simply be laughable.

They consistently recommend funds on the basis of historic performance when, in actual fact, the best days of many of these funds are well and truly behind them in that the managers responsible for that outperformance have long since departed and the current managers are simply not in the same league.

They also tend to recommend sectors/asset classes long after the smart money has already taken its profit there and moved on.

No, if you want to take your investing seriously (as every investor should) there really is no shortcut.

You have to DYOR.