Low-fee ISA tracking FTSE World Ex-UK?

CSMR

I'm looking for an ISA that tracks the "FTSE World Ex-UK" index. Trying to create a balanced portfolio and currently have too much exposure to the UK market (and sterling - does that make sense?). Eventually it could be the main staple of my family's equities portfolio.

The management fees I've seen seem rather steep for a product that is essentially trivial to manage. Any advice?

Legal and General has a tracker with an AMC of 0.8%, TER 0.92%. Steep.

The AMC of the FTSE100 product is 0.3% by comparison.
It looks like the rate that financial companies charge pension companies for share trackers is under 0.15%:
http://www.footballerspensions.com/docs/list_of_investment_funds.pdf
But is anything available to the public at nearer this sort of rate?

Extremely grateful for thoughts and advice!

turbobob

There are some ETF's tracking the MSCI World index, but not sure about the one you mention. For example:

DB X-trackers MSCI World (XMWO)
iShares MSCI World (IWRD)
Lyxor MSCI World (LWOR)

You'd need a self select ISA to have ETF's like this in it.

EDIT - found one!! DB X-trackers FTSE All World Ex UK - http://www.dbxtrackers.co.uk/EN/showpage.asp?pageid=143&inrnr=151&pkpnr=295 (code is XWXU). The annual charge and TER is 0.4%

CSMR

Definitely the best option I've seen. That's a great help, many thanks!

KieranB

Ok, I am no expert but can you not invest the majority part in a world tracker to benefit from the lower charges and then a smal part in a hedge fund that will benefit from a fall in UK equities? Or part in corp bonds/gilts? Depends on your risk..

Once again, i have a very basic knowledge and am happy for people to completely knock this aguent down or build on it?

CSMR

KieranB: That makes some sense, but I don't know how an ordinary person can invest in more sophisiticated instruments. (It would be nice if you could put a highly leveraged fund in an ISA for tax reasons for example.)

As far as spreading risk goes the plan is to transfer most of the equities to the global tracker. We have too much UK property so it would be nice to sell short UK property markets and buy foreign property markets but I feel that would be too complex, I don't know how to do that, and the fees might outweigh any benefits.

ozzage

I hold shares in the db x-trackers ETF mentioned above (XWXU), to provide me with some "easy" global exposure, next to a FTSE all-share ETF for something local.

I then use more specific ETFs to overweight areas on which I want to further focus. For example, I'm almost mostly in large-caps with the ETFs above, so I then have a few regional small-cap ETFs on top, and a BRIC one to up my emerging market exposure a bit.

I haven't been doing it long enough to know if this is a good strategy.

CSMR

ozzage wrote: »

I haven't been doing it long enough to know if this is a good strategy.

Sounds like a perfect strategy!