What in your opinion are good asset allocations.

Imnoexpert_2

I have read that asset allocation is the key to investing. And as these ae academics that goes a long way My mum said "don't put all your eggs in one basket".

I saw today in the Hargreaves Lansdown magazine some attempts at sampple portfolios which I thought were pretty dire. For example an income portfolio contained "UK equity Income 40-100%":(. Well that is so wide it's no help at all. Or Mark Dampiers suggestion for a 40-50 year old which included 5% Japan as well as 15% in Asia Pacific/ Emerging Markets which I thought a bit high:eek:.

So just for fun (because I know that the next poster will be an IFA who will rightly say that you need to go round have a cup of tea and spend an hour filling in forms before you go back and follow the FSA advice) what do you think is a good asset allocation for some or all of the popular stereotypes (growth, balanced, risk averse, x years to retirement)? I exclude 3 months cash and your house from my calculations.

Lokolo

I've got:

40% UK Equity (all cap)
15% UK Smallcap
15% European Growth
15% Global Growth
15% Emerging Markets

There is a lot of overlap in that (in terms of geographical) but its fine for me. Going med-high risk of growth.

Imnoexpert_2

Interesting - no fixed interest.

Aegis

As an IFA I usually have to say that a balanced portfolio offers the best risk/return profile. As a private investor, I much prefer taking significantly more risk than most clients are willing to, therefore I'm invested into about 5% property and 95% equities with significant weighting towards emerging markets and global equities.

My investments have been very volatile!

ossian

Aegis,

Do you expect property to be beneficial? My view is... EM property looks like a bubble and developed market property looks like a deflating bubble.

Cheers,
ossian

Totton

The Association of Private Client Investment Managers and Stockbrokers publish a variety of 'mixes' at
http://www.apcims.co.uk/investors/private_investor_indices.php

Or Mark Dampiers suggestion for a 40-50 year old which included 5% Japan as well as 15% in Asia Pacific/ Emerging Markets which I thought a bit high

I think that's a little low rather than high, Asia Pacific/Em has become a lot more mainstream nowadays. Frontier Markets are a different story and that's where I'd be looking for much less than 15% at 40-50yrs of age. I tend to hope that a person of 40-50 has a similar amount of life left to fund :-)

Regards,
Mickey

Aegis

ossian wrote: »

Aegis,

Do you expect property to be beneficial? My view is... EM property looks like a bubble and developed market property looks like a deflating bubble.

Cheers,
ossian

I think it's a sector where there's opportunity for investment, especially with the statistic that we've now passed the 7 billion humans mark. It's difficult enough to say where UK property is going, I'm certainly not going to guess where property in every other country is going to go, but I don't want to miss out if it does well.

I think property is less overvalued than bonds at present, hence why I have no exposure to a fairly common asset class. That said, if equity markets tank further, I could be left looking very silly indeed!