Unit trusts, discount brokers and ISAs

elementary

Hi this is my first post and I'm hoping for some advice.

For the past few months I've subscribed to 5 unit trusts, namely:

(Henderson) New Star Tactical Portfolio (£100pm)
Jupiter High Interest Fund (£25pm)
Jupiter Global Managed Fund (£25pm)
Wesleyan International Trust (£25pm)
Wesleyan Growth Trust (£25pm)

They were sold to me by a Wesleyan advisor as, and I have no reason to doubt this, the New Star account being high risk and the others medium risk. My question comes in that I have seen TD Waterhouse offering discounted funds, including my Jupiter and New Star ones for 0.25% initial fee instead of 5.25% which I pay now. Would I be able to move funds between providers to get the better rate? Are there better funds out there with roughly the same goals? And are there any hidden charges associated with discount brokers if I did move? I'm more interested in the results than being in a particular field so if these funds aren't performers I'd be pleased to find out.

Also none of these are inside an ISA. Is this something I should be doing? Can I move them to inside an ISA? I do have a cash ISA just not a stocks & shares one.

Ultimately I'd like to get involved in buying my own shares but with the market rising at the moment I'm a little reticent.

Many thanks in advance.

Rollinghome

The majority of funds you should be able to move to elsewhere at no cost. One you might like to look at is Hargreaves Lansdown at http://www.h-l.co.uk.

With very few exceptions they make no frontend charge at all and also pay you back a tiny amount of the annual commission they receive from the fund managers.

Whether you gain from having the funds in an ISA will depend on your circumstances but as there will be no additional costs involved for unit trusts, and you don't know how your tax positon might change, then it should certainly be worth holding them within an ISA. Dividends within an ISA are still subject to tax as is interest on any cash but interest from bond funds is tax free. If you're lucky enough to exceed the annual allowance there's no capital gains payable.

So you could tranfer to them to the new manager then transfer up to your annual allowance into an ISA with them. You'll have to sell and rebuy to do that but there shouldn't be any cost in doing that in most cases.

H-L don't have any additional costs as far as I'm aware and are very efficient. They are a bit heavy with the sales literature and waffle from the slightly batty Mr Hargreaves but that's not too much of a burden to ignore. For shares within an ISA they'll make an annual charge of 0.5% of the value. If you contact them with any query by phone or email you tend to get a swift and well-informed reply.

Are there better funds out there with roughly the same goals?

At the H-L site here you'll find a lot of information and tools including charts that allow you to compare your funds with others, with sector averages, and with market indexes. At sites such as http://www.trustnet.com you find still more information and performance comparison charts.

FATHEROFTWO_2

Also use the citywire website and use the fund comparison tool.
I wouldthen cross refer with morningstar (go tools and select fund compare)

Do your own research.

Another good site for asset allocation is bestinvest.

Lokolo

I have New Star Tactical Portfolio as part of my agreesive portfolio.

It hasn't done as well as I had hoped as of late but I suspect it may catchup.

Also with HL their mag thing you get a list of funds and how well they have performed in their sector, this helps sometimes