Comments please on my possible investment

carnet

The Legg Mason fund has a fine record and an excellent manager, but personally I prefer one or two other Jap funds.

Robin Geffen's fund is interesting but very high risk - personally I'd go for one of the more diversified Eastern Europe (or even selective GEM) offerings which currently tend to have high weightings in Russia - but greater scope for getting out out if things there go pear-shaped.

The SL UK Equity Growth fund has a consistent top quartile record but there are quite a few better funds in the sector.

Philip Gibbs is a first class manager and his fund has been a cracker - but again, I prefer another one in the sector going forward.

No comment on the property fund - don't invest in 'em (my own house is enough property exposure for me )

dunstonh

Not bad though, considering we have no links with each other and therefore use different research and information to make our recommendations.

The Fid Glob Prop is an unknown entity but just the nature of it makes it desirable.

Jupitor Fin Ops is one of a few funds in that area that could do the job so its possible the difference is there although I don't think it is as it is a highly regarded fund and its consistency and capital preservation is very good.

LM Japan is where I think the difference is. JPM or Neptune could be your funds in that sector or maybe a multi-manager as it a sector where fund managers seem to take it in turn with a quite a few consistent performers in the running and a multi-manager fund would fit nicely there. (although you could say that with most sectors!)

On the other two, I don't think its Neptune Russia as that is specialist and whilst portfolios can have a specialist fund, the variety you can choose from is very wide. Standard Life UK equity doesnt offer enough variety by itself and just leaves you exposed only to large cap. It could be used in a blend of mid and small caps but not by itself.

kayleigh

Thanks so much for the help.

Will find a property fund - and put into that as well and some more Europe/US.

Silly question

what is automatic rebalancing and does fidelity do it? Does it cost?

EdInvestor

carnet wrote:

No comment on the property fund - don't invest in 'em (my own house is enough property exposure for me )

Commercial and residential property are different asset classes of course. :)

dunstonh

what is automatic rebalancing and does fidelity do it? Does it cost?

Fidelity do not auto rebalance. Most of the others do and at no cost.

Basically, say you put 10% into 10 funds to suit your risk profile. Over the space of the year the funds would grow or lose money at different rates and your portfolio would no longer match your risk profile. For example, say Japan doubled but US went down 10%. You would now have an increased exposure to Japan. Plus, what goes up by that amount can go down by that amount. Rebalancing moves money out of the funds that have gone up and puts it back into the funds that have gone down (or not performed as well. Maybe due to risk differences, maybe as it wasnt the top sector that year). Rebalancing can also be a way to crystalise any gains on the riskier funds. If you have a low risk fund or two, you can rebalance the profits into those each year and when things go down, it will take money out of the low risk funds and put them back into the high risk funds allowing you to sell when high and buy when low.

Think tech stocks, if you had an exposure to them before the boom and crash a tthe point the Financial Mail was encouraging people to invest and held onto them you would have lost 90% of your capital (needing 900% growth again to get your money back). Had you rebalanced, you would have been taking money out of the tech stock fund as it increased through the boom years. So, you would not have lost anything near, if anything at all had your rebalanced.

If you cant do it automatically (as its not an option with fidelity), then you can do manually. It doesnt have to be annually

carnet

EdInvestor wrote:

Commercial and residential property are different asset classes of course. :)

Indeed ?

Just don't rate commercial property as much of an investment prospect going forward.

Although, did make quite a bit out of residential property in the late seventies to mid eighties.

al_yrpal

:eek: You can't be a lazy investor! Just investing your money and then leaving it is a recipe for disaster. :eek:

If you must do that, go for a fund of funds. It actually replaces your choices by reasoned choices of a manager, who will swop funds for you.

Since we aren't allowed to recommend specific funds have a look here to see what has been performing best: http://www.trustnet.com/ut/funds/perf.asp?sort=29&ss=0&txtS=&txtSS=&columns=&page=0&booIMA=0&reg=all&sec=fof&ima=all&unit=all&type=all But... check progress every 12 months, and decide whether to swop horses.

EdInvestor

carnet wrote:

Just don't rate commercial property as much of an investment prospect going forward.

Although, did make quite a bit out of residential property in the late seventies to mid eighties.

Property funds have undoubtedly been a good spot to be in the last 5 years

They are useful I find because the asset class is not correlated with equities ( or residential property), and has very stable long term income yields because most quality commercial property is let out long term at quite high rents on upwards-only review leases. The yields are both higher and more stable than with currently available residential (ie BTL)property.

Lately there has also been a surge in capital growth too as there is a wall of money out there from WP and f/s pensions coming out of equities and looking for stable yield. This has I suspect been increased by the very unstable and confusing behaviour of the bond markets over the last couple of years.

I doubt these high overall returns of 15-20% will last, but am anyway quite happy with a nice stable return of half that.

Property funds were not formerly allowed in ISAs, so most people invest in them via their pension.This is about to change but the result has been that there are not many good property unit trusts to choose from.

An alternative is the newish offshore listed property trusts which have been set up by the insurers in the last few years in anticipation of the planned REITs (real estate investment trusts) currently under discussion. For anyone who wants to look at these the epics for a few of the main ones are UBR (Scottish Widows) SLI (Standard Life) and FCPT (For and Col/Friends Prov).

carnet

EdInvestor wrote:

Property funds have undoubtedly been a good spot to be in the last 5 years

With the emphasis on "last"

Commercial property rental values are on a downward trend which, IMHO, is set to continue for the medium term.

whiteflag_3

carnet wrote:

With the emphasis on "last"

Commercial property rental values are on a downward trend which, IMHO, is set to continue for the medium term.

Is this UK or globally?