Professional IFA HELP needed for £80,000

rory41444

Chrismaths wrote:

Ouch, that's dreadful. I assume that IFA is now recommending commodities and property funds...

He spends his time playing golf in Portugal now, no doubt recommending occasional clients to invest in commodities and property funds as you suggest!!

dunstonh

rory41444 wrote:

He spends his time playing golf in Portugal now, no doubt recommending occasional clients to invest in commodities and property funds as you suggest!!

Why didnt you complain?

It is a bad spread. It is high risk. The documentation on the client file would have to really support such a transaction for it to not be upheld. We are talking real confirmation that the risk was suitable to you. Not just puting 100% in the high risk box. Especially if you had no history of investing like that.

rory41444

dunstonh wrote:

Why didnt you complain?

Is it too late? I thought everyone lost out when the tech bubble burst.

dunstonh

You cannot complain about performance but you can complain if the investments are not consistent with your risk profile.

So, if you were a cautious investor and you were put into the spread you have, then you can complain about that. If you are a high risk investor, then you cannot complain as that comes with the territory.

prudryden

dunstonh wrote:

You cannot complain about performance but you can complain if the investments are not consistent with your risk profile.

So, if you were a cautious investor and you were put into the spread you have, then you can complain about that. If you are a high risk investor, then you cannot complain as that comes with the territory.

Back in 2000, you would have had to be very lucky not to lose 40% to 50%
of your portfolio unless you were totally invested in short term bonds (sovereign or corporate - not the mis-named thingeys). In addition, your investment objectives were generally only income, growth or balanced. Your risk profile was generally either conservative (gilts and cash only), moderate (pretty much everything) or speculation (commodity futures, options). You probably fell into the growth and moderate category. The old SFA was still trying to find their feet and didn't have as much bark or bite as now.

rory41444

prudryden wrote:

Back in 2000, you would have had to be very lucky not to lose 40% to 50%
You probably fell into the growth and moderate category. .

Spot on. Growth was the main objective therefore I deserved to lose what I did as I agreed to the risk element. Rightly or wrongly I still think my IFA should have steered me more in a diversificated direction but for all I can remember (it was six years ago) the liklihood was that I had been too readily influenced by projected earnings based on past performances and as we hadn't had a crash for some time I was a bit green.

However what's important now is that Wong Se Fu gets it right and it looks as though he's getting some pretty sound advice. You've put a lot of thought into your portfolio WSE, good luck.

Jake'sGran

Part of a posting from Dunstonh
CM gave an example of a fund that was in the top 10 where the manager had recently changed. So, what is past performance going to have to do with it? Well, if you look at the past performance of his old fund, then you perhaps can get an idea of how the manager works but that involves looking at another fund and not the current one. End of extract

Was this Credit Suisse Income? If so HL sent out out a warning that the manager was leaving and suggested it might be prudent to change which I did. I don't much like HL although I buy my mini equity ISAs through them but it does not seem there is a better broke/FA for discounts unfortunately. I see they have a new web site - just as messy to use as the last one.

carnet

Jake'sGran wrote:

Part of a posting from Dunstonh
CM gave an example of a fund that was in the top 10 where the manager had recently changed.

Was this Credit Suisse Income? .

CS Income hasn't been in the top quartile (let alone top 10) of its sector more or less since Dr. Bill Mott stood down from its day to day management almost four years ago.

After him came Leigh Harrison - who departed well over a year ago.

After him came Errol Francis - who left a few months ago.

Another example of a once outperforming fund which consequently became very large in size (over £1 billion) but which successive managers have been unable to maintain any sort of success.

EdInvestor

I am not sure about the this alleged size problem.

For instance the biggest proper fund (excluding your bog standard balanced managed insurance jobs) in the UK at present is Invesco Perp High Income at what, 5bn quid?

Big enough, but it doesn't stop Woodford from making 27% , and his implicit costs are the same as a tracker, cheap :)No need to be nimble then.

How about Bolton at Fidelity SS ( local) probably about 3bn these days? Bad year - distracted for half of it by the fund split and lost out on the betting stocks and Isoft.But still made 16%.

Actually that's what I personally want to see with a growth/special sits type fund: guy has a bad year, but fund is up 16%. There's a lot to be said for fund managers who know how to limit the damage.

wongseefu

Hi Guys,


To answer a previous question, l think the reason why my attitude to risk is slightly out of sync with my portfolio is due to me being a total novice at this.

Obviously the more riskier the fund is the more potential growth there is over the years but he's also said if l feel like l wanted to add or change any funds that would be ok as long as l consult him. In the end l have total control over what funds l want to invest in but if its against his recommendations then he would not be responsible.

So l think his selection of funds is pretty good so far, to me sometimes looking at these funds l can get carried away with looking at the best performing ones. I guess l should take a step back and look at those funds with moderate risk rather than high risk.... l haven't been through times when the market was in recession so its best to trust my IFA whos had experiance of the good times and bad times.

Regards, WSF