Investments & Funds Research Help

wilkoitfc

Hi,

I've recently opened up a fund builder account with Interactive Investor.

After leaving the direct debit to fund the account for a little while, i am now looking for places where i can do my research on funds etc etc so i can quantify the most suitable place to invest my money..

Can anyone share any good websites or other publications?

Thanks,

PS: PM me if there is an issue with posting links

timarr

Depends what kind of "fund" you're interested in. Each year 3 out of 4 managed funds fail to beat the standard indices so normally you're better off buying an index tracker. In that case you're mainly only interested in finding the tracker with the lowest total expense ratio (TER) and tracking error (which tells you how closely it tracks its index). In the UK a TER under 0.4% is about as good as it gets.

So search the list of funds available for "index", look for low charges and then go check the provider's website for their expenses and error rates. Best done through an ISA, as long as there are no extra charges because if the markets return to normal and you invest for long enough (25 years as a minimum) you'll end up with a big capital gains tax bill otherwise.

There is a problem with index trackers, especially in the UK. The UK indices are dominated by a few companies and sectors - oil, mining, pharma and (surprisingly) banks. As the index trackers (mainly) track by market capitalisation - the bigger the company the more of it they own - then you can end up with less diversification than you might want. So you might want to look for a European or even a global tracker to start with.

If you want to go down the managed fund route then I suggest your best research method would be to borrow a copy of the Financial Times' fund pages, a set of darts and a monkey and let it choose for you.

timarr

thrupence

wilkoitfc wrote: »

Hi,

I've recently opened up a fund builder account with Interactive Investor.

After leaving the direct debit to fund the account for a little while, i am now looking for places where i can do my research on funds etc etc so i can quantify the most suitable place to invest my money..

Can anyone share any good websites or other publications?

Thanks,

PS: PM me if there is an issue with posting links

It's a good idea to know where and what you want to invest in and what you're trying to achieve by investing first and then look for the best fund, etf in that.

This is a good start for that:

http://www.investopedia.com/?viewed=1

Then you can use the following sites to screen for funds etc, paying attention to their gradings as a start

Morningstar
Trustnet
Citywire
Bestinvest

Richard_DandR

There are factsheets on the FTSE indices showing sector weightings and the largest companies.

This is the All-Share:

http://www.ftse.com/Indices/UK_Indices/Downloads/FTSE_All-Share_Index_Factsheet.pdf

IanHurrell

i like morningstar and citywire for seeing the rankings of funds. There seems to be quite a lot to it. I've been investing once a year for the past 10 and am getting better at identifying funds that perform
good luck ...Ian

wilkoitfc

Thanks very much for your help