Easiest Way to Buy a Tracker

possoto

I want to put £100K into a FTSE tracker, and leave it there until the recovery in a year or few. What is the cheapest and easiest way to do that? Or will every method involve a complicated application form, proof of ID, and all that anti money laundering stuff? Ideally I just want to bank transfer the funds into an account, and then make a phone call or login to an online account and click the moment I want to buy the FTSE tracker.

purch

Buy an Exchange Traded Fund, through an online broker,

http://www.trustnet.com/Factsheets/Factsheet.aspx?fundCode=UOFTSE&univ=E

Is a FTSE 100 tracker

http://www.trustnet.com/Investments/Perf.aspx?univ=E&Pf_sortedColumn=NameFull&Pf_sortedDirection=Asc&Pf_PageNo=1

is a list of available ETF's

If it's a one off transaction, your transactions costs will be pretty low and AMC's low too, and you have real time trading.

possoto

Thanks for the suggestion, I looked at the links. But that all looks horribly complicated to me. All those figure and technical stuff.

I'm looking for something nice and simple.

scrooge2008

http://www.find.co.uk/investments/funds&trusts/uk_index_trackers_best_buys_table

How about this link, shows top ten index trackers, expenses and returns.

The_Fiddler_2

possoto wrote: »

I'm looking for something nice and simple.

I'm looking for an April Fool - oh wait its only January

possoto

scrooge2008 wrote: »

http://www.find.co.uk/investments/funds&trusts/uk_index_trackers_best_buys_table

How about this link, shows top ten index trackers, expenses and returns.

Thank you for this. They look straight forward, just need to see which really has the lowest fees and charges, as the headline charge sometimes hides other costs. I notice that one of the cheapest in terms of percentage then charges an initial fee and there is another percentage difference between the buy and sell price.

I'm looking for the overall lowest cost FTSE tracker, with either online or telephone access to add funds or withdraw.

sabretoothtigger

I think theres index funds for .5% annual charge or .3% even and no fee to leave or enter

Your idea of put the money in now and take it out in a year when alls well is overly simple. I think its a better idea to gradually put the money in via standing order, you could still be making a mistake but at least it would give you time to realise it

ETf is for day traders and people who really want to buy the price that minute which it doesnt sound like you do


Its amazing to see in the history that barclays made up 3% of the ftse100 and rbs was 4%. Do they make even 1% now
The top 10 companies make up 50% of all money you will be investing in

Can ETF be short sold and what is the actual commision to buy, % or flat rate?
Might be usefull if there was no min charge as it could be used to buy a small stake for an hour on the up trend


http://www.h-l.co.uk/funds/Fund-prices?func=search&formid=1002&company=&sector=101&x=18&y=13&investment=By+investment+name

Blah99

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

Can ETF be short sold and what is the actual commision to buy, % or flat rate?

Not much point shorting an index tracking ETF, you may as well just short the index itself (unless you've found an ETF that tracks something ridiculous, like small cap potato farmers in Essex)....

Incidentally I buy and short-term hold (< 3 months) index ETFs and don't necessarily see them as a day trading tool.

possoto

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

I think theres index funds for .5% annual charge or .3% even and no fee to leave or enter

ETf is for day traders and people who really want to buy the price that minute which it doesnt sound like you do

Thank you. I looked at some funds with this type of rate, Srooge2008 suggested this link http://www.find.co.uk/investments/funds&trusts/uk_index_trackers_best_buys_table
and Liontrust has 0.3% fee although the difference between the bid (sell) and offer (buy) prices is 0.6%, so I wonder if I need to factor that in as a hidden cost too?

What I'd like to do is invest all the money at once when the FTSE is at a certain price. Then wait. Of course no-one knows when the FTSE will be at the bottom, maybe it has passed it, or maybe the low point is yet to come. But in my mind I have a figure where I think it would be a good time to enter.

May not sound like a very sophisticated approach I know, but I feel comfortable with it.

sabretoothtigger

Better to take an average figure I reckon since numbers mean little right now but time does

I looked at that link earlier, the biggest fund there looks the most flexible and probably the reason for its popularity.
A difference in the bid offer is the spread or cost to buy that product, its your initial charge to add a one off to the annual cost.

Especially if your going to put it all in at once I'd prefer the annual cost because then you dont suffer a cost all at once and you can decide your timing without influence but if you were going to invest for more then 2 years it would cost less in time

Charges arent the biggest factor on performance for a fund anyway, its accuracy of tracking that probably matters more and your own personal timing