Funds - the more risky type - Advice pls.

Lokolo

Rollinghome wrote: »

Resorting to abuse in the face of facts is hardly a sign of erudition but not unexpected given your background.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Rollinghome

Lokolo wrote: »

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Steady on, I hope you aren't accusing me of being a ex-salesman now sugging as an adviser. I may have many skeletons in my closet but not that one.

dunstonh

Rollinghome wrote: »

Resorting to abuse in the face of facts is hardly a sign of erudition but not unexpected given your background.

Not unexpected given your background. How many times has the board banned you yet you return under new logins to continue with your pointless posts and ignorance of facts (apart from the "facts" you invent).

StevieJ

Linton wrote: »

Suggest you dont try to time the market with funds. No-one really knows whether we are at the top, bottom, or somewhere in the middle: if lots of people knew the prices would move to the point where they didnt.

On average you will lose because of transaction costs. If you aim to hold your funds for a long period (5+ years) you should not worry too much about temporary movements.

If you sell up completely how will you know when to get back into the market? The only reason I can see for turning the lot into cash is if you need the cash.

You are better off having a wide range of different investments and accepting that over time some will do badly for a while and others will do well. If you have diversified effectively you should be able to make minor tweaks at regular but infrequent intervals to take profits from the well performing funds and buy into other funds that are hopefully temporarily cheap.

Or crystallising a capital gain as he states in his post while the market is at the top end, sounds reasonable. In fact I will be doing that myself.

StevieJ

Linton wrote: »

No - I am saying that there is no useful correlation between the level of charges and the returns you will get.

A fund is a good or bad fund irrespective of the charges. Using the charges as a determining factor eg by condemning all high charging funds, could lead you to making some very silly decisions. The very low charging funds, FTSE index trackers, have been a very poor investment for more than 10 years.

.

But still probably outperformed around 50% of the higher charging funds BTW I think the Ftse tracking funds have given a good seeing to, to most of the higher charging bank centric Income funds over the past year or two.

Linton

StevieJ wrote: »

Or crystallising a capital gain as he states in his post while the market is at the top end, sounds reasonable. In fact I will be doing that myself.

Sure, if you KNOW the market is at the top you should clearly sell. And then when you KNOW that the market is at the bottom you buy. Making money is easy really - why doesnt every one do it?.

jamesd

Rollinghome wrote: »

Even managed fundsthat have outperformed can suddnly go very wrong as with Invesco Perpetual Income which may or may not recover.

Exactly what does Invesco Perpetual Income have to recover? Red is Invesco Perpetual Income retail accumulation, blue is HSBC FTSE All-share tracker, institutional units:


It did its job and exactly what the manager said it would do, reducing risk because the manager wasn't happy with the economy and he was right when the FTSE and world markets dropped lot, while this managed fund dropped less.

There's been all sorts of correct talk about it not growing as much over the last year as the FTSE but since it fell by less in the previous year those who held it throughout have reason to be happy that it did what it said it would do, reducing volatility by taking some risk off the table.

I personally have both Invesco Perpetual Income and FTSE tracker funds, in different places.

StevieJ

Linton wrote: »

Sure, if you KNOW the market is at the top you should clearly sell. And then when you KNOW that the market is at the bottom you buy. Making money is easy really - why doesnt every one do it?.

Or taking advantage of the £10,100 GGT exemption at the end of a very strong year on the stock market.

StevieJ

jamesd wrote: »

Exactly what does Invesco Perpetual Income have to recover? Red is Invesco Perpetual Income retail accumulation, blue is HSBC FTSE All-share tracker, institutional units:


It did its job and exactly what the manager said it would do, reducing risk because the manager wasn't happy with the economy and he was right when the FTSE and world markets dropped lot, while this managed fund dropped less.

There's been all sorts of correct talk about it not growing as much over the last year as the FTSE but since it fell by less in the previous year those who held it throughout have reason to be happy that it did what it said it would do, reducing volatility by taking some risk off the table.

I personally have both Invesco Perpetual Income and FTSE tracker funds, in different places.

The Invesco fund is certainly worthy of praise, I think it made a point of swerving bank shares just at the correct time. The only thing I had against it is the heavy investment in tobacco products, as an ex smoker it just didnt feel right. In my post above I did say most purely because of IP.

Linton

StevieJ wrote: »

But still probably outperformed around 50% of the higher charging funds BTW I think the Ftse tracking funds have given a good seeing to, to most of the higher charging bank centric Income funds over the past year or two.

Err the objective of the tracker is to track the index. The objective of an Income fund is to provide income. To claim that the tracker is better than the income funds because it had a better performance seems unhelpful. The counter to that is that the tracker fund presumably produced lower income than the income funds.

Which really gets back to my main point. If you wanted performance perhaps you wouldnt have majored in UK wide-spectrum funds anyway. The major decision is the sector. The less important decision is the fund. By emphasising trackers you are putting the cart before the horse.

Personally, if my sector decision was that what my portfolio really needed was an unfocused UK mid/high cap fund than I may well have chosen a tracker because it would be expected to perform moderately well with minimum non-sectorial risk. But I find it difficult to see what requirements would lead me in that direction in the first place.

IMHO once you invest outside the large mature (basically UK,US,Japan) exchanges or focus on specific sectors you need the expertise that managed funds provide.