Professional Finance people no better than amateurs

Linton

gadgetmind wrote: »

What about comparing with HGSC?

I have been looking at RS64, but I don't really fancy RBS as the counterparty ...

Have you found any data on the HGSC index? My googling has come up with very little, certainly no detailed historic performance data.

Linton

gadgetmind wrote: »

Out of interest, why do you like fund managers so much?

In general I dont - its just that I dont see any proven advantages of trackers, certainly nothing sufficient to base one's whole investment strategy on them, or dare I say distort a thought-through investment strategy just to use them.

In particular cases funds are the only practical way to get access to the sectors I wish to invest in, and often those funds are managed.

darkpool

jem16 wrote: »

Well that's very odd considering Meeper and I enlightened you back in December.

yeah, ok you did tell me. tbh i think the problem was i wasn't very interested than and i'm still not very interested now.


please please please put me on ignore.

gadgetmind

Linton wrote: »

I dont see any proven advantages of trackers.

Really? Not even for major markets in developed countries?

That the fund industry hasn't yet managed to present any solid evidence that they can provide post-fee outperformance is certainly a good argument for trackers, as is the fact that the performance of individual funds varies wildly (from each other and over time), which makes investing via them risky unless you invest in a wide selection of them.

I do hold active funds and ITs but only for specialist areas and only for a small slice of my investments.

JamesU

Interesting article in yesterday's FT:

UK wrap platforms see growing ETF interest (just Google the title for full article, copyright, so just a bit of a taster below):

BlackRock saw assets held in iShares ETFs across six wrap platforms used by IFAs increase 34 per cent in 2011 to £746m at the end of December......ETFs appealed to financial advisers and discretionary fund managers because of their low cost and the access they provided to so many different asset classes. “Many advisers and discetionary fund managers appear to be using ETFs both as complete passive propositions and also as a way of reducing the cost of core holdings in otherwise actively managed model portfolios”........

JamesU

jem16

darkpool wrote: »

yeah, ok you did tell me. tbh i think the problem was i wasn't very interested than and i'm still not very interested now.

I think you have summed yourself up very nicely.

You are not interested in anything anyone says that doesn't agree with your way of thinking.

darkpool

jem16 wrote: »

I think you have summed yourself up very nicely.

You are not interested in anything anyone says that doesn't agree with your way of thinking.

i just don't see what point you are trying to make, everyone knows what UTs are, everyone knows what trackers are.

no i'm not really interested in your input.

gadgetmind

darkpool wrote: »

no i'm not really interested in your input.

And we're not really interested in your output.

psychic_teabag

darkpool wrote: »

i just don't see what point you are trying to make, everyone knows what UTs are, everyone knows what trackers are.

Sorry, I'm with the others : everyone else seems to know that UT's include tracker funds ; UT does not imply specifically active funds. And of course not all active funds are UT's - there's lots of OEICs too.

(But it wasn't too hard that figure out that when you were going on about UT's you meant active funds.)

Linton

gadgetmind wrote: »

Really? Not even for major markets in developed countries?

That the fund industry hasn't yet managed to present any solid evidence that they can provide post-fee outperformance is certainly a good argument for trackers, as is the fact that the performance of individual funds varies wildly (from each other and over time), which makes investing via them risky unless you invest in a wide selection of them.
...

I have yet to see any UK evidence that trackers even in mature markets outperform equivalent managed funds. What evidence I have seen seems to indicate that managed funds perform on average much the same as trackers after fees have been taken - ie the managers do well enough on average to pay their own fees. That is what the 10 year performance comparison would seem to indicate. If you have some different evidence I would be interested to see it.

As to volatility as far as I can see the data from trustnet does not support your belief that managed funds are more volatile.

Trustnet provides volatility measures. What they mean mathematically I dont know but clearly the same numbers are the same, higher numbers more volatile and lower ones less:

The figures are for 1 year and 3 year volatilities, performance is over 5 years.

Scot Widow AllShare (Best performing tracker): 17.0/17.96

MFM Slater Growth (Best performing managed fund): 14.23/17.6
Liontrust Special Sit (2nd best performing fund): 13.04/13.53
Baillie Giff Equity (1st quartile fund): 18.25/16.7
Investec UYK Alpha (Median fund): 18.98/18.26
M&S Select portfolio (3rd quartile fund): 16.5/17.26
Manek Growth (Worst performing fund):19.26/20.25

So from a quick non-biased look at a small though varied range of funds the Tracker volatility looks pretty average. Perhaps it would be worth carrying out a more thorough check.

This perhaps is not too surprising if the index is highly volatile and so bounces around a fund which performs very stably. The fund confusingly would be seen as performing erratically against the index.

Perhaps more interestingly there is perhaps some suggestion in the data that performance is negatively correlated with volatility.