New to funds

JSave

Hi

I am looking to pay a regular amount into a couple of funds. The main reason for this is that all my savings are split 50/50 shares/cash. All the cash will hopfully be a deposit on a flat and the shares are all "safe" as in they are mostly large firms and diversified across different industries etc...

I would like to start contributing to something in the emerging markets, however having no real knowledge of them am not prepared to invest in individual firms. I am with TD waterhouse and they seem to want a mnimum £500 investment per fund and I am unclear about the fees. I would prefer to go with another firm anyway as TD are not that great of late. I am thinking of £100 per month initially in Jupitor India and Jupitor China funds, I am picking Jupitor out of the air and have no real preference except for those two countries.

My questions are

1) What are the fees and if they are multiple types which type should I be looking at, I would prefer a one off payment.

2) Which firm should I purchase this through (I also have a share centre account).

3) I was leaning away from putting down £1000 with TD as I do not know if this is a good time to be buying so was going to spread the purchase to hedge my bets.

4) I have all my cash / shares in dollars / sterling in the intrest of diversity how am I affected buying these funds in sterling and is there a better option

5) Any suggestions on funds to look at in those two markets...

This wll be a long term investment, 10+ years bar any disasters!

Thanks in advance.

Lokolo

TD Waterhouse has a charge of £10 every quarter or something?

Hargreaves Lansdowne have a minimum of £50 per fund per month. Do not charge management fees.

http://www.h-l.co.uk/

Most of the initial charges are discounted as well as AMC. HL charge 0.25% initial for your funds. TD Waterhouse I think are the same, I can't see individual details without logging it it seems, but it says Jupiter is 0.25% max.

JSave

AMC? Is this an annual charge? do most / all of them have this?

Lokolo

Yes and yes. Tracker funds usually have a lot smaller AMC but the majority of man run funds have an AMC of around 1-1.25% I believe?

Jake'sGran

I use HL and in the summer I put money into First State Asia Pacific Leaders after doing some research on Trustnet and it has gained 25% on £2K. Trustnet is an excellent site if you want to compare one fund to another of a similar type. HL do not charge the initial fee and also, they rebate a small amount of their trail fee.

JSave

I will check it out, anyone got any ideas about my other questions?

Thanks!

JSave

I am signing up with HL and looking into those funds thanks

EdInvestor

JSave wrote: »

.... the shares are all "safe" as in they are mostly large firms and diversified across different industries etc...

I'd be interested to hear the OP's definition of 'safe'.

JSave

Safe as in they are in different sectors and do not represent money I cannot survive going up as well as down. Reading these boards makes me feel like a completely outlandish reckless investor as my money is not all tied up in a bank earning nothing. I am sure by IFA standards it is not safe at all.