Tracker Funds?

dilied

Chrismaths, thanks for that. The more research I do on Vanguard the more impressive it appears to be. I am keen to gain exposure to a commodity ETF and see that one is available on NYSE that tracks the Goldman index. Any thoughts on this? Thanks!

Chrismaths

Not too keen on the Goldman's index - it's not as diversified as say the Reuters/Jeffries CRB linky See how much is in energy and crude oil. There's an ETF in paris from Lyxor that tracks that. Dawnay Day Quantum have a unit trust that tracks commodities, and iFunds have launched a new actively managed unit trust based on commodity etfs. None of these are recommendations, just general information regarding what is available.

Conrad

baldbloke wrote:

I like the hamburger analogy - apart from the US flavour - but I shake my head in bemusement through the whole process. I want the market to fall as I am about to buy and then to rise should I decide to sell! There's no logic to the act of investing if I am to wish for different outcomes to the same daily events based on my personal calendar. It's fascinating and gripping but it's not good sense nor good management of meagre resources.

I enjoy your lucid posts, and think you highlight a common pattern of investor concern.

In the end I came to the conclusion that I ought to put a relatively small proportion of income into financial services instruments (trackers, policies et al) and the rest into 'direct' investing.

For the direct portion I plumped for property as it will always exist and have a utility value (barring a mass decline in population), so will always have a 'worth'.

I started slowly with UK property but then moved into buying foreign property. A recent example is a small farm (uninhabited) in Estonia for under £20000.
Appartments there sell for £5000, nicely presented and emminently rentable.
Also went for other cheap but promising locations including Germany and Morocco.

Spread your money and bever entirely rely on financial instruments is my advice.
People say 'but I have'nt the time', buy if you analyise this it rarely turns out to be the case. A few days research in ones life is within most peoples means afterall many of us sit watching telly for a few hours each night!

Conrad

angelus wrote:

Is the US a poor area to be investing in just now? t's just that all US sector funds i look at are doing poorly.

An irony Ive witnessed over years of investing is this;

Inexperienced investors tend to migrate to arena's that have already done well as this gives them comfort, which whilst perfectly understandable can be a mistake.

In my opinion they might want to do the exact opposite. As Warren Buffet the Worlds second richest citizen says 'the time to get interested is when no one else is'.

I bought heavily into tech stock funds when they crashed. Many 'contrarian' investment funds have been quietly amassing German real estate because the Germans have suffered a long recession which looks like is now behind them.

Simply following trends that have proved profitable in the past is unlikely to yield decent returns.

Take Gold: Inexperienced investors are now attracted by recent sparkling returns, when in actual fact they should have bought in when Gold was an unpopular beast (2003). Now is not the time to buy.

HERE'S A CLASSIC: Many layman have recently been drawn to UK commercial property funds. This on the back of decent returns over the last few years.
NOW IS NOT THE TIME. The bandwaggon has well and trully passed.

Standard Life and others have recently launched Global Property funds. On examination I found they were heavily weighted into UK and US property. This is total nonsense. These 2 markets have already had massive booms. These muppet fund managers ought to be investing in Germany and the Baltic Tigers etc.

'The time to get interested is when noone else is'.

Having said all this a still agree one should invest a proportion in funds that have LONG TERM decent track records.

hobbesandco

One thing that's struck me over the years is that you should invest in what you're comfortable with and in what you know. If you work in the IT industry you may be more knowledgeable about investing in IT companies, if you're an estate agent you may be more knowledgeable about investing in property, etc.

Over the last 3 years I've learned a lot about investing in stocks via trackers, ETFs and direct investment here in the UK and US. My comfort zone doesn't include property yet but I will look to diversify into property here, in Canada and possibly Europe. Of course it will take a lot of research but hopefully by then prices will be a little more reasonable too. (And I could always ask our very own property guru 'Conrad' too!)

I still consider myself an investing 'novice' but my advice to newbies is to concentrate on what you know first no matter what the asset class.

EdInvestor

You don't have to worry about what's up and what's down right now, yesterday or tomorrow, if you get your asset allocation right in the first place,so that it is aligned to your personal attitude to risk, and you look long term.

It is however true that inexperienced investors often buy at the top of the market and then suffer a loss, but I blame the salesmen, not the investors for this.If salesmen were telling them to buy low and sell high, that's what they would do, because it's logical.

Instead the salemen just take advantage of investors' ignorance, fear and greed.

dilied

Chrismaths wrote:

Not too keen on the Goldman's index - it's not as diversified as say the Reuters/Jeffries CRB linky See how much is in energy and crude oil. There's an ETF in paris from Lyxor that tracks that. Dawnay Day Quantum have a unit trust that tracks commodities, and iFunds have launched a new actively managed unit trust based on commodity etfs. None of these are recommendations, just general information regarding what is available.

Thanks for that; I've tried via my broker iWeb to buy the Lyxor ETF, but they don't trade it. Any suggestion as to how I can buy it? Many thanks

Chrismaths

Try hargreaves lansdown. Be careful with the tax treatment - it might be classified as an offshore non-distributor, which would make any capital gains liable to income tax.

cheerfulcat

You can buy it through Selftrade. The tax issue seems very hazy; the prospectus implies that HMRC aren't telling how they intend to treat any gains.

Chrismaths

That link is to the lyxor GBS (gold) etf traded in london. We were talking about the Lyxor Commodities CRB ETF traded in paris. (CRB.PA) And I don't think selftrade will do it. (it doesn't have a tick or a phone).