How long does it take to purcase say an index tracker?

frothy-coffee_2

Is it just the case of picking one in say a fund supermarket and then commiting to buy it?

Is the price fixed there and then, or at midnight, or some later date?

Totton

The timing of fund prices does vary but usually happens around 12:00, you put in your order no later than 08:00 and the sale goes through once the next price is confirmed. ETF's are bought and sold during market open times.

HTH,
Mickey

psychic_teabag

The time for your order varies from supermarket to supermarket. HL is 08:00. I think bestinvest is 09:30 and iii are 11:15 but I'm not competely sure on those two.

Generally you commit how much you are going to spend, and they work out how many units that gets you when the price is worked out.

Rollinghome

If you go direct to say L&G, buying a tracker over the phone takes about 30 seconds. (Or did when I last did it about 10 years or so ago.) You can also get the price-fix for that day right up to 12.00 when they do it. So you have the advantage of being able to watch say the FTSE and if you like the price effectively buy at that price rather find the price has moved against you if you have to place an order before the market opens (as you do with Hargreaves Lansdown). You also avoid the additional "platform fee" that HL charge.

SnowMan

Buying the Fidelity Moneybuilder UK index from Fidelity is pretty quick also. Think you can put your order in quite late in the morning for a 12 midday purchase (which is when units are priced). At 0.3% TER it is one of the cheapest all share trackers about.

The HSBC Global Investment Centre (range of HSBC trackers at around 0.3% TER, no other charges) requires you to put in your purchase order before 4pm ( I think it is) for purchase of units the next day at 12 midday. It can take a couple of days to set up your Global Investment Centre account in the first place as you have to open an HSBC account first to act as settlement account.

moneylover

its this timing of funds that I dont much like now we have such volatility but I realised the other day that it was possible to do better than with H-L in getting an idea of which way the valuation would go. Shame with HSBC you have got to place an order the day before as I was going to move my HSBC ftse all share tracker from H-L to them now its going to be £2 a month from January.

iii have the same charges as H-L currently do (although I dont know comparison if its in an ISA) so if you can guage the price at about 11am rather than before 8am that has surely got to be better.

frothy-coffee_2

Thankyou all. That's a shorter time period, and better than I thought.

I'm tempted to get a tracker as the ftse index seems quite low. But there still seems to be a lot of doom and gloom regarfing Europe.