SIPPS and Forex??

purch

investing in Forex through a Sipps pension?

You will be TRADING in FX, not investing !!

There is a less than subtle difference.

property.advert

I was licensed to trade on the floors of investment banks and one thing which prospective traders have to get to grips with is that their decision making process does alter when it is real money. You cannot just attempt to replicate what happens with "fun money" where you just start again if you lose your shirt.

People should note the difference between playing poker for fun and playing for real money !

Kristopher01

Investing in a forex trading business can be very risky. At the same time we can make profits. Forex trading online has become more and more popular in recent years. Even forex trading robots can help in management techniques.

purch

I was licensed to trade on the floors of investment banks

What sort of Licence was that ?

System

dunstonh wrote: »

what twaddle. You typed all that on a thread that has been dead for over a year.

Yes, I did. Mainly because your replies were classically "know all" and downright condascending.

And if you think it's twaddle then why not come back in a few years time and see what happened to the euro against the £ (I'm betting MY PENSION on the euro being ridiculously overpriced against the £ at the moment - for the record about 91p per euro SPOT). So I'm prepared to put MY PENSION MONEY where my mouth is and short the euro/gbp.

I also think ALL currencies are ridiculously overvalued against real tangible things (other than houses) that can't be printed ad nauseum like confetti. As such I've just bought a 250 acre forest because timber values are currently based on the unsustainable wholesale rape of rainforests. Coupled with carbon trading, environmental responsibility and a pound sinking into oblivion, timber in the UK is set to increase in value dramatically.

Finally, I've got gold in zurich held in physical form through bullionvault.com and exposure to mining shares focussed primarily on silver recovery.

For the record please note the current silver price of £363 per kg and compare it to the staggering gains that will be virtually incomprehensible when and if you bother to return in a few years time.

As for the comment about it being different when it's real money.....EXACTLY!

Anyone can advise others what to do with THEIR money. And "advisors" and traders inevitable spout out nothing more than the herd mentality of the day. That's why financial advisors seem to get so excited about poxy annual returns of 7% (less their walloping fee and hidden inflation) that then gets wiped out in corrections or when the printing presses start running. The only people getting rich out of this charade are bankers and their entourage - including politicians.

I repeat that I am not advising anyone of anything (other than to think and act for themselves and not to trust any advise - including my own). I am, however, prepared to tell you and others where I'm putting my pension at the moment so that other people can see that they too can stop listening to "professional" pronouncements of "twaddle" and stop paying advisors that are almost universally outperformed by monkeys picking investments at random!

I've turned (REAL) money from a £12,000 pension pot into £500,000 (with no intervening contributions) since I took control of it in 2003. It's now March 2010, so check back and see what has happened to the euro/gbp, gold, silver and forests. Then at least it may encourage a few people to get out of the clutches of the parasitical financial "services(????!!!!)" "industry" and think and act for themselves.

justpaper

^ got to agree with most if not all what u said,

jamesd

sihutchuk, it's really hard to see the merit of your post when the person who dunstonh was responding to had sat there watching their pension investments fall in value when all they had to do was contact Scottish Widows and tell them they wanted to change investments. If they didn't do that then it's hard for me to think that they are a good candidate for forex trading, just based on their lack of knowledge. It's not a place for those who aren't on the ball to be.

System

Erm.....I thought that's what the poster was about to do! He's not happy with Scottish Widows (and who would be), he's been practising with forex demo accounts and he's ready to take the first steps into the real world of self-responsibility.

It's called learning! He trusted Scottish Widows grossly overpaid fund managers to look after his pension and they didn't. Now he's taken more interest in protecting his future and came on here to ask how - not have some condescending claptrap spouted at him from a representative of a Mickey Mouse profession.

System

A sipp is just a tax wrapper. You choose a company to administer your sipp and they transfer your pension into it.

Most sipp companies offer bog standard investments. For example you can direct percentages of your pension monies into shares or umpteen funds.

What you need, if you want to trade forex, is a sipp provider who will allow you to invest in anything you want - provided it meets inland revenue rules. Once you open a sipp with a company like this you will be able to decide what YOU want to invest in and then instruct the company to open a forex account with FXCM (if that's who you've chosen) in the name of your sipp.

It will likely be a name like "XYZ Company Sipp - your name trust". It basically says that this is a trust account with you as the ultimate beneficiary. Your sipp company will have to open the account with FXCM and they will then deposit whatever funds you've instructed them to deposit. You can then begin investing in forex.

The FXCM account would be under your control and you can trade it exactly as you have been in your demo account. The balance will go up and down according to your success or otherwise. When you want to withdraw all or some of the balance you instruct your sipp to request a withdrawal and the funds are returned to your sipp account.

Basically, the idea with a sipp is that IT IS NOT YOUR MONEY. It is monies held in trust (by your sipp company) with you as the beneficiary but you can instruct where it is invested. Instead of an overpaid city lemming in charge of the fund you get to be the manager.

Quite a few providers of investment products will not allow a sipp account to be opened with them. The reason is that a sipp can only be liable for its actual fund. If you !!!! it up with a bad forex trade and lose more than the funds in the account they cannot go after anyone for the losses.

ODL are one of the companies that will allow a sipp to open an account with them. FXCM just bought them out so you might try them. They have a good metatrading platform that allows you to chart most crosses and also trade CFD's (contracts for difference).

The problem with broad ranging sipps is that they require human contact! In other words you actually have to talk to the person managing your fund and express what it is you want to invest in. I say this is a problem only because it is inevitably more expensive.

The best sipp I found by a mile is The IPS Partnership. They operate on the basis that both they and you are trustees of the trust fund (sipp). As such there is a legal onus on both of you to act in the interests of the beneficiary - i.e. you. They also appoint a dedicated account manager to you.

When you open the sipp you inevitably spend time instructing them where you want the monies to go. Maybe it would be:
Open a bullionvault account and move £10,000 into it
Open an ODL account and move £50,000 into it
Buy commercial premises - £250,000
Open an online stockbroker account and move £100,000 into it
Leave £20,000 in the sipp trustee bank account

Once this is done there is very little ongoing work for the sipp company because you trade the bullionvault account, the ODL account and the stockbroker account. All they do is check the balance at the end of the year and keep required records. You can even manage the property yourself (or have the sipp meet professional management fees) - note you cannot benefit in any way personally from the property unless you pay open market rental rates.

Fees for IPS are about £600 plus VAT (payable out of the pension fund) so you need a decent fund to make it worthwhile. Property purchases will incur an additional £600 odd.

I hope this helps. I'm sympathetic to anyone trying to open a self-managing sipp because there's virtually no helpful information out there. It's all budget sipps offering BORING bog standard packaged, off the shelf city paper investments. Highly dangerous if you don't trust them further than you could throw them - as I don't!

As an example, do any of them allow you to invest in real physical gold? No, it's paper promises they'll let you buy - some bank promising to pay you the difference between your "gold" buy price and the "gold" sell price. They then manipulate the price by selling more gold than even exists and pretend that their rank greed and irresponsibility is somehow noble and in your interests!

If you want to invest your pension fund in gold you should consider opening a sipp and getting them to open an account with bullionvault.com. Then you can trade real gold held within vaults in either london, zurich or new york.

GOOD LUCK and remember that I'm not advising you to do anything - just helping with options!

Loopgames

That's exactly what I'm trying to do. If someone can help me with this situation I would appreciate it.

I have a preserved pension of a small amount £11k. i have only 2 months left to transfer into a sipp..and I want to invest a certain amount in gold but I am having trouble finding a sipp provider who will allow me to do this without going to a financial adviser who will charge me £1k for the honour of telling me what I already know. I used to work in the pensions industry a while back as an actuary but left it unqualified. However, I know enough about the risks of transferring from a guaranteed scheme (final salary with protected rights) to an unguaranteed risky scheme (to the layperson).

I am prepared for the risks but would like to make my own decisions.

Please help!