My first portfolio strategy

principa

I think your strategy is good but overcomplicated based on my own experience:

I use HL for all investments - cheap trackers and some active funds:

50% trackers using HSBC (all except Japan)
50% active - 1 multimanager fund (40%), 1 active (40%) and 1 emerging markets (20%).

Now, after one year of monthly drip feed investment ... ranking the funds each month in terms of performance reveals that the best performing fund is different each month and is normally a tracker.. leaving me to believe one tracker would probably suffice!

Rollinghome

crimsonfin wrote: »

Something that confuses me about setting up a fund with HL is the discounts/charges for setting up the funds. Most seems to be 0% setup fee with just an annual charge and TER to consider. From what you say above if you were to move your funds around in say a years time HL do not charge anything for this ? Am i missing something or where do they make their money from ?

H-L will typically get about half of the Annual Management Charge you pay. They get the trail commission, which their figures show is on average 0.57%, plus the platform charge of 0.25%, plus various additional kick-backs and payments from the fund managers for marketing their funds.

Incidentally, when they list a unit trust as having perhaps 5% initial charge and 5% saving that doesn't mean there isn't an initial cost. If you deduct 5% from the higher price you'll see it's still 0.25% to 0.5% above the lower (bid) price, not zero. The difference is supposedly the cost of creating the units. For an OEIC there is just one price and so the cost is within the overall cost.

Frizer

I use H-L for the HSBC trackers. I have tried investing in funds (including some you mention) but I have found that it's more rewarding just buying shares directly on another platform.

Jacka87

Thanks for this thread, it has made me think about investing in stocks a bit more.

i was considering investing in shares and havent thought this much about selecting shares. Can anybody suggest a good place to start reading about them other than on here so I can build up some background knowledge.

Thanks

crimsonfin

just answering my own previous question in the hope that it helps someone else ....

finally found an online investment return calculator which allows you to view how your investment will do taking into account charges and potential growth figures. Search for your investment trust from over 18000 funds and then enter your figures to see potential profit/loss

apps.finra[dot]org/fundanalyzer/1/fa.aspx

(sorry damn forum wont allow me to post links - maybe someone could repost with the proper url)

crimsonfin

principa wrote: »

Now, after one year of monthly drip feed investment ... ranking the funds each month in terms of performance reveals that the best performing fund is different each month and is normally a tracker.. leaving me to believe one tracker would probably suffice!

Any chance you could post some figures (even fudged so you dont have to divulge your actual investments) to give us newbies an idea of whether or not there is any money to be made in this stocks and shares thing ?

Im still trying to determine where to put my money and I've struggled to find any information about any real returns which people have made.

cheers

mike88

crimsonfin wrote: »

Any chance you could post some figures (even fudged so you dont have to divulge your actual investments) to give us newbies an idea of whether or not there is any money to be made in this stocks and shares thing ?

Im still trying to determine where to put my money and I've struggled to find any information about any real returns which people have made.

cheers

Some figures on this site here but remember you can lose money as well as gain.

http://citywire.co.uk/money/fund-and-fund-manager-performance/home.aspx

Investing is for people who are preapred to take risks and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose.

Noktok

Thanks everyone for the continued feedback. I'm happy to see that some are finding my thread interesting or useful and still using it for ongoing discussion.

DS0 wrote: »

I would be really interested to nkow your 'final selections' both funds and platforms as my circumstances are largely similar to yours. Please could you let us know?

Hi DS0. I went ahead with the strategy outlined in my original post, one Hargreaves Lansdown and one Interactive Investor account both now opened and holding last years remaining ISA allowance. I found both companies very helpful when sorting out queries over the phone. Regular payments of £890 per month set up for each account to drip feed next tax years full allowance. I went through my fund choices again and satisfied myself that I couldn't find any obviously better alternatives, so I'm sticking with them (except for the commodities and property ETFs, which I haven't got around to finalising yet).

These are intended to be my core holdings but I'm leaving some of my monthly subscriptions as cash to invest where the mood takes me or as opportunities may arise. I can use this to perhaps add a tech fund to increase my exposure to that sector and I'm also keeping in mind the funds that mike88 suggested which I think could be interesting additions.

I have to reiterate that I am still a newbie to investing and learning a lot (and making the rest of it up ) as I go along, so I don't pretend to have the right answers, but I'm glad if this has been useful to you and wish you the best of luck with your investments.

principa wrote: »

I think your strategy is good but overcomplicated based on my own experience [...] after one year of monthly drip feed investment [...] leaving me to believe one tracker would probably suffice!

Perhaps my strategy does seem overcomplicated and I might well be trying to do to much at the first attempt. I think the reason is diversification, I have made a special effort to try to ensure that I am not reliant on any single market sector or region. I don't think that one year is sufficient to make assumptions about what sort of fund will perform best in the (un)foreseeable future and given that I'm eventually seeking to invest £70k or more, I wouldn't be happy to entrust that sum to any one particular fund.

The key for me is that I understand the role of each fund in my portfolio, how it fits into my long-term strategy and why I chose it. The portfolio doesn't feel overly complicated or confusing to me because I understand the individual purpose of every single component in it. It's exactly as complicated as I need to achieve my strategy; no more and no less

Frizer wrote: »

I use H-L for the HSBC trackers. I have tried investing in funds (including some you mention) but I have found that it's more rewarding just buying shares directly on another platform.

This is the main reason I opened the iii account, even though it doesn't currently offer me much advantage over HL apart from the couple of ETF funds, but I am hoping to dabble in share trading at some point in the future too. But that's 'here be dragons' territory for me until I get the time to research how to pick shares, as you may have gathered I don't like embarking on any venture with my money until I understand what I'm doing

principa

Perhaps my strategy does seem overcomplicated and I might well be trying to do to much at the first attempt. I think the reason is diversification

You should question whether the investments you have selected really are diversified - what are you diversifying with respect to? currency fluctuations? geography? sector? the fund going belly up?