Invesment Strategy 2011

MrGilmore

Good Morning,

Firstly, a quick hello to all board members, looking forward to reading as well as partaking in some good discussions.

:hello:

Now then, onto why I'm here...

In a sentence, I'm a reformed spender turned saver looking to become a savvy investor.

I'm currently saving a total of £1000 per month which is split between £250 in a HSBC Preferential Regular Saver and £750 in a Stocks & Shares ISA.

Both are performing okay but, next year I'm looking to move into a bigger property so my outgoings are due to increase and hence savings and investments will be cut back.

My plans for 2011 were as follows:

Stick with the £250 HSBC Preferential Regular Saver and invest £250 into a FTSE Tracker. Now, at this moment in time, I'm unsure whether to go FTSE 100 or FTSE All-Share, could anyone advise accordingly?

Also, some recommendations on who to go with on the tracker would be most grateful as I cannot see anywhere HSBC offering such a product?

P.S. Go easy on me, I'm only 18 but will try not to be too much of nuisance.

bendix

MrGilmore wrote: »

Now, at this moment in time, I'm unsure whether to go FTSE 100 or FTSE All-Share, could anyone advise accordingly?

Does it really matter? It depends if you want a tracker with exposure to 100 top blue chip companies or exposure to the wider index.

The one consideration to bear in mind is that the All Share index is more a gauge of UK sentiment, whereas FTSE100 is much more heavily weighted to UK companies with significant international exposure, so it's more a global play.

At the end of the day, it's your judgement call.

Reaper

Actually there is not as much difference between the FTSE 100 and the FTSE All-Share as you might think. As the FTSE All-Share allocates according to market value the top 100 firms make up 80% of it.

For some time those top 100 firms have lagged the rest of the market. Some are saying that will change and now is a good time to invest in them, while others prefer to stick to small or medium firms which have done so much better in the past. If you take the latter view then the FTSE 250 gives you just the medium firms (size 101 - 350) and the FTSE Small Cap the smaller ones (those outside the top 350).

talexuser

the spending cuts start next year, so it depends whether you think the larger companies will weather the storm or smaller companies will be harder hit.

Will sectors like construction for example do well with few first time buyers and less public service contracts? New car sales are declining, will they pick up after higher taxes kick in? These are the type of questions to be asking about 2011.

mac2008

Firstly, bloody well done for saving a grand a month at 18 - keep that up and you could be seriously wealthy by 40..

What do you currently hold in your S&S ISA and who is it with? iii.co.uk have some FTSE trackers, including HSBC FTSE all share with no initial charge and a TER of 0.27%, which isn't bad. You might also want to consider adding other funds to give you a bit more diversification.

MrGilmore

mac2008 wrote: »

Firstly, bloody well done for saving a grand a month at 18 - keep that up and you could be seriously wealthy by 40..

What do you currently hold in your S&S ISA and who is it with? iii.co.uk have some FTSE trackers, including HSBC FTSE all share with no initial charge and a TER of 0.27%, which isn't bad. You might also want to consider adding other funds to give you a bit more diversification.

The S&S ISA is with HSBC in their World Fund Portoflio, the 'balanced' option IIRC.

I'm quite lucky that, although I've moved out from home, my outgoings are still relatively low and my other half pays her fair share of the bills too.

As soon as I turned 18 I spent like it was going out of fashion, after 6 months of that got bored and moved out, been saving ever since and it's actually quite enjoyable. The investment side is good fun too.

I'll take a look on iii, have a thanks for the reccomendation.

sabretoothtigger

I'm unsure whether to go FTSE 100 or FTSE All-Share, could anyone advise accordingly?

almost the same thing. all share, its slightly more diversified


The real question would be ft100 or ft250 Theres also a ft350 which is a combo of the two but again thats almost the same as ft100. The thing not often highlighted is a ft250 tracker does not include the largest companies, it wont have have bp or hsbc.

As a consequence its quite different, the largest parts of that kind of tracker are Petropavlovsk, etc which is a russian gold and iron miner So its very different which I like

Yahoo gives graphs for the ftse indexes and maybe ft does too
Here is a list of all ftse companies, I was just talking about #100 onwards to 350
http://stockchallenge.co.uk/ftse.php