Investment Trusts - how to buy?

alexchegwin

I have been looking at some investment trusts on http://www.trustnet.com/Investments/Perf.aspx?univ=T

I have an account with hoodless brennan but cannot find any of the trusts listed with the hoodless company search ?

How do I buy into these ?

thanks for any help

opinions4u

The companies are usually listed on the stock market so can be bought and sold as normal share purchases.

RayWolfe

Most ITs have "Savings Schemes" which allow purchases to be made at low or zero cost. Go to the web sites of a trust you may be interested in and take a look. Here's an example:
http://www.bailliegifford.com/pages/UKPersonalInvestors/landing.aspx

anselld

Or JPMorgan here I have used them to save for my kids. Very good service.

cheerfulcat

Which ones were you looking for?

alexchegwin

To be honest I am not sure. I am wanting to invest some savings to take advantage of the downturn and thought that trusts seemed to offer a resonably secure method of doing this ?

I was hoping to find a chart which i could use to compare the various trusts performances.

Thanks for your help

Alex

SeanW

I've used III's branded sharebuilder to buy some. £1.50 (+0.5% stamp duty) to buy on set dates, £10 to sell real time. You'd need to work out if this is more expensive than the schemes own plans depending on how much you plan to buy and sell.

dunstonh

thought that trusts seemed to offer a resonably secure method of doing this ?

Investment trusts are typically less secure than unit trusts. Typically they are higher risk than an equivalent fund in a unit trust. However, they do offer greater potential for much the same reason.

Also, you have to think about what you mean as secure. Secure usually means no capital loss. Investing usually means utilising risk based assets which can go down as well as up.

I was hoping to find a chart which i could use to compare the various trusts performances.

And what would that tell you? not a trick question. Just want to know what data you would be looking at to decide what trusts would be good to invest in looking forward.

alexchegwin

I supose I was thinking that if a specific trust had performed well over the last year that it would be a good indicator of how well it would perform in the near future ?

thanks

EdInvestor

You need to locate the IT's "EPIC" (stock market symbol) so you can call it up at HB.

To compare the ITs, suggest you customise the Trustnet table so you are looking at each sector, one by one. Then it should be easy to see which are the better performers.

Obviously past performance is no guide etc, indeed in the current environment it's probably more likely that you will get better performance going forward from ITs which have fallen dramatically in the last year or two, as all the future bad news is already factored into the price.

For instance there's talk that lots of money is about to go out of cash and into other asset classes in search of better income because interest rates are now so low.That would suggest that equity income ITs (invest in shares which pay higher dividends), and corporate bond ITs may attract money and start to do well.

dunstonh

I supose I was thinking that if a specific trust had performed well over the last year that it would be a good indicator of how well it would perform in the near future ?

That isnt how investments work. That will only tell you what was best in that period. Not what is going to be best in the next. In a period of growth the higher risk funds tend to be better. In periods of decline the lower risk ones (big generalisation but no point for more detail now). For years, investments in banks were the big performers but last year they suffered major losses. Had you gone on past performance you could have seen losses of upto 90%.

Past performance really doesnt mean that much at all unless you are looking for consistency within its sector. Even then you have to look at the risk as not all funds have the same risk or objectives. A good fund could be lucky, be invested in the right place at the right time or be higher risk when its right to be or lower risk when its right to be. You should learn more about risk and reward before commiting to investments.