Funds/portfolio advice

chedburgh

mike88 wrote: »

The portfolio is skewed into higher risk areas so I presume the OP is nowhere nearing retirement.

Nope, read my first post again. Its skewed that way as thats what i am aiming at.

mike88 wrote: »

Personally I am averse to single country funds as they are unpredictable and you can seriously get caught out. There is zero flexibility if things go wrong as the manager is left with nowhere to invest. At least with general emerging market and international funds the manager has the ability to move funds around.

Yes, this is a very good point and it was raised by several posters. I have in fact looked into this and taken the advice, i collapsed my India and Brazil funds into the Aberdean Emerging Markets funds, and i am much hapier with it.

mike88 wrote: »

Gold funds might be good now but they are volatile if held for the long term. I would not hold gold at present as the price is far too high.

I dont hold any gold funds, there was none in my list? I do hold a commodities fund, which has a small allocation in gold, my prefered way to gain a little exposure.

mike88 wrote: »

I am also surprised to see a bond fund amidst such high risk funds as it will do little to reduce the risk profile.

Well, i was looking to balance my portfolio a little, hence my original post. Some of the funds i invested in i choose because i wanted to introduce a little stability. I am very risk tolent, and i need to keep it in check a little. If this is not working in my portfolio, please elaborate, since i am looking for ideas and advice here.

mike88

chedburgh wrote: »

I dont hold any gold funds, there was none in my list? I do hold a commodities fund, which has a small allocation in gold, my prefered way to gain a little exposure.



Well, i was looking to balance my portfolio a little, hence my original post. Some of the funds i invested in i choose because i wanted to introduce a little stability. I am very risk tolent, and i need to keep it in check a little. If this is not working in my portfolio, please elaborate, since i am looking for ideas and advice here.

As regards gold I was in fact referring to a suggestion made by another poster that you should buy one.

As regards balancing your portfolio I would suggest you look at some UK equity income funds. They have performed badly over the last few years but as they are defensively biassed they would help balance things up being at the lower end of the risk scale. I use the City Wire website's Manager League Tables to evaluate fund performance - link here:

http://citywire.co.uk/money/fund-and-fund-manager-performance/-/unit-trusts/uk-equity-income/fund-manager-league-table.aspx?CitywireClassID=11&RankModelID=8

You have the Invesco Perpetual High Income Fund but this historically does not always act as a conventional equity income fund. It just so happens that at present Neil Woodford feels that there is better value in defensively biassed income stocks so his fund is now loaded with them. Its a great fund but it would not harm to add another equity income fund to your portfolio if your aim is to lower risk.

I've begun to increase my exposure to Europe on the basis that poor performance is bound to turn around sooner rather than later. This week I bought BlackRock European Dynamic but that is probably not something you should do as that is inconsistent with your wish to inject some conservatism into your portfolio.

FATHEROFTWO_2

chedburgh wrote: »

Hello Folks,

I was hoping some of the knowledgeable investors here could give me a little feedback or critique of my current funds portfolio. I am coming up to a milestone where i am going to attempt to balance things out a little more. It looks as follows:

Invesco Perpetual High Income 12.7%
JPM Natural Resources 11.0%
First State Global Emerging Markets Leaders 9.6%
Invesco Perpetual Monthly Income Plus 9.4%
First State Asia Pacific Leaders 9.1%
Schroder European Alpha Plus 8.1%
Marlborough Special Situations 8.0%
Neptune Russia and Greater Russia 6.0%
M&G Recovery 5.9%
Aberdeen Emerging Markets 5.9%
Henderson UK Property 5.8%
First State Indian Subcontinent 2.9%
Marlborough UK Micro Cap Growth 2.9%
Neptune Latin America 2.8%

Now some important notes!

I have grown the portfolio a an ad-hock way, mainly with my interest in higher risk areas, and also with an view to emerging markets and UK equity/assets. Yes, i am very tolerant to high risk, but i would like to balance things out as i see as a sensible idea at this point in the portfolio's life. My investment time-frame is around 15 years or more.

I am currently primarily focusing on growing the Marlborough UK Micro Cap, Neptune Latin America and First State Indian Subcontinent, secondly with M&G Recovery and First State Asia Pacific Leaders, this suits my current aims (stated above), but i am reaching them end of this "phase". I do top up other funds with small amounts.

This is not an eggs all in one basket scenario, i make sure i hold the portfolio value again in cash, and i am becoming interested in share investing (in UK equities only) as a smaller part of the complete portfolio.

I was thinking of adding an single North America fund, maybe a european special situations. Possibly a sovereign bonds fund, but i feel these are a little over valued right now, so maybe emerging markets bonds or high yield?

What do you think? Feedback, ideas and pointing out anything bad in my strategy very welcome!

Many thanks

There is a lot of similarities between the OP funds and the ones I curerntly hold.

I too have been invested in funds for 2 1/2 yrs and am up 20 percent although in october 2008 I was down 15 percent.

I have re jigged my porfolio many times and experimented with absolute funds which were all the rage and to a certain extent are and dumped them as I found they were absolute rubbish.

I also had various Global funds including

M&g global leaders
insynergy odey

Sold both of them

I still have

M&G global basics and
Neptune global equity.

I take the point about the manager having somewhere to go if the market moves but I am not entirely convinced by it as I think the individual sector funds will have managers who are totally focused on there expertise rather than an all singing dancing fund that does everything.

I have benchmarked my folio against the

Jupiter balanced managed fund of fuds for comparison purposes and have outperformed it by choosing the better funds in the sector rather that being confined to jupiter products.


The main differences to your choices are

First state global rescources rathe than the JPM fund

Dont have the First State Global Emerging Markets Leaders due to overlapping of fund sectors

Neptune european instead of your Schroder European Alpha Plus

Did have the standard life smaller companies instead of Marlborough Special Situations but bottled it and sold out to top up the IP high income as I thought there may be a double dip.May buy back in shortly

Dont have Aberdeen Emerging Markets as it overlaps my existing funds


Have first state global property rather than your Henderson UK Property as I thought it best to spread the risk over the whole world rather than tie it up in the UK market

Dont have either

Marlborough UK Micro Cap Growth or
Neptune Latin America

I have exposure to 2 bond funds namely

Invesco perp corp bond and
Investic high yield bond

But the rest on your folio I have

Plus

Neptune US opps fund
and an ETF in pysical gold

In total I hold 14 funds at present.

Best of luck

chedburgh

mike88 wrote: »

As regards gold I was in fact referring to a suggestion made by another poster that you should buy one.

As regards balancing your portfolio I would suggest you look at some UK equity income funds. They have performed badly over the last few years but as they are defensively biassed they would help balance things up being at the lower end of the risk scale. I use the City Wire website's Manager League Tables to evaluate fund performance - link here:

http://citywire.co.uk/money/fund-and-fund-manager-performance/-/unit-trusts/uk-equity-income/fund-manager-league-table.aspx?CitywireClassID=11&RankModelID=8

You have the Invesco Perpetual High Income Fund but this historically does not always act as a conventional equity income fund. It just so happens that at present Neil Woodford feels that there is better value in defensively biassed income stocks so his fund is now loaded with them. Its a great fund but it would not harm to add another equity income fund to your portfolio if your aim is to lower risk.

I've begun to increase my exposure to Europe on the basis that poor performance is bound to turn around sooner rather than later. This week I bought BlackRock European Dynamic but that is probably not something you should do as that is inconsistent with your wish to inject some conservatism into your portfolio.

Thanks for the advice. I have nearly 35% invested in the UK, so i am not sure i want to increase it right now, but in future i may add more UK Equity Income funds, since its likely that number will shrink as i top up the areas i am expanding (mainly global).

I use trustnet's manager rating to assist in my decisions. I have used citywire, but only a little, but whats interesting is the top managers on each site are not the same! There is some cross over, but only in some case.

riskyb

Hey Chedburgh- you fill me with hope. are you willing to share your potfolio with us??

chedburgh wrote: »

I have managed somewhere around 20% over the last few years. I dont have exact figures with me, they are at home in my spreadsheets.

I am not sure how it stacks up against others who are more experienced, but i am happy with it. I was fairly new to this all 3 years ago, lots of reading and homework and it gets easier, and for me personally, more interesting the more i learnt.

youronly

Do you think its still wise to buy Gold at the moment? Or has it reached its peak? I'm still deciding if to move some money into a Gold ETF or not.

When I'm picking funds I use citywire selections which does most of the research for me. Haven't looked at trustnet, may give it a go.

sunil1234

riskyb wrote: »

Hey Chedburgh- you fill me with hope. are you willing to share your potfolio with us??

his portfolio is already detailed on this thread:)

riskyb

Thanks sunil1234. I missed the begining of the thread.

bendix

Why is everyone getting excited over 20% over a three year period? It's barely 6% per annum. I'm not saying it's a bad return over the particular three year period, but 6% per annum before inflation is pretty small beer in the scheme of things.