Hargreaves Lansdown marketing just a load of rubbish?

blinko

Reaper wrote: »

Actually they are busy reducing HL shares in their UK equity fund. Of the total fund investment HL made up these proportions of it:
31 March = 7.4%
31 April = 7.2%
31 May = 6.5%

HL shares have done very well since there float wish i had bought some when they were offered but what can you do.

its interesting to see the people hating HL on here ? but yet they are happy to enjoy there very low fee's

and there main complaint seems tobe that the W150 isn't independent or has funds which pay the highest fees

my question is,

In your mind when you first looked at the wealth 150 how did you think that it was compiled ?

jamesd

HL has high commissions but they make it inexpensive for small pot sizes because there's no fixed annual charge. At larger sizes the costs add up and it becomes a good idea to switch instead of continuing to pay them.

Totton

Reaper wrote: »

Actually they are busy reducing HL shares in their UK equity fund.

Are they reducing HL shares or are some of the other holdings simply outperforming and thus causing other share holdings to decrease in % of the pie?

Totton

blinko wrote: »

In your mind when you first looked at the wealth 150 how did you think that it was compiled ?

Not really the point. HL promote their Wealth 150 as the road to riches, it is clearly a marketing tool and customers should not be blamed for mistaking it as something that HL spend heavily to promote.

Mickey

Totton

jamesd wrote: »

HL has high commissions but they make it inexpensive for small pot sizes because there's no fixed annual charge

Only true in the case of their fund account, other accounts do attract dealing plus an annual charge for anything other than funds.

blinko

Totton wrote: »

Not really the point. HL promote their Wealth 150 as the road to riches, it is clearly a marketing tool and customers should not be blamed for mistaking it as something that HL spend heavily to promote.

Mickey

your not really being honest with yourself here are you Mickey ?!

In your mind how did you think the wealth 150 was compiled ?

with regards to HL shares they look toppy i woudl look to reduce If I held

Reaper

Totton wrote: »

Are they reducing HL shares or are some of the other holdings simply outperforming and thus causing other share holdings to decrease in % of the pie?

They actively reduced them, though it doesn't sound like they plan to completely sell up. From their release at the end of April:

We reduced three positions – Barr,
Burberry and Hargreaves Lansdown. Each
remains a business we like very much, but
the shares of each have been remarkably
strong over the last 12 months and it is
some time since we have been prepared to
add to them. Burberry and HL were and
remain very substantial positions in the Fund
and we must signal to investors that while
there are good strategic arguments for
retaining the shares, we do not expect them
to contribute as much again as they have
over the last 12 months for some
time.

jamesd

Totton wrote: »

Only true in the case of their fund account, other accounts do attract dealing plus an annual charge for anything other than funds.

It's still true for the ISA and SIPP compared to paying a fee just to have an account. If you're not using funds it'll still probably be a bad idea to use HL because their dealing costs are higher than some of the competition.

dunstonh

with regards to HL shares they look toppy i woudl look to reduce If I held

Given that they make around 0.8% p.a. on the assets under management on their platform and that could well drop by half post RDR, you do wonder if the best days are behind them.

That said, they have proven to be very good at marketing and finding ways of getting people to pay more in fees than they think they are. So, they will probably find some spin on it to increase their charges whilst making people think they are going to pay less.

almondsalty

I did hear HL were planning to improve share dealing prices to be more competitive. That could be big business given their total amount of overall clients.

Just hope they don't push certain shares too hard!