Inv Trust - Short(ish) List

xylophone

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/investing/article-1718291/Pick-best-cheapest-investment-Isa-platform.html
Alliance Trust Savings
Alliance Trust is another of the Isa players offering to refund all trail commission, as well as discounting many initial charges down to 0%.
Its range of funds is not as wide as some rivals but it does offer access to the full run of investment trusts, shares, ETFs and direct bonds available. Investors using it can access research and tools from Morningstar with their portfolio.
Its £25 annual charge delivers one free trade worth £12.50. But on the flipside, it does charge a flat £12.50 per trade for buying funds, shares, ETFs and investment trusts. However, doing this as regular monthly online direct debit investing slashes the charge to £1.50 per deal, while dividend reinvestment costs £5
Who is it good for? Buy-and-hold investors looking to boost their fund performance by cutting commission and still access shares, corporate bonds and ETFs. It is good for monthly regular share, investment trust and ETF investors too. [More details on Alliance Trust Savings Isa]
Might suit?

Newbie2saving

xylophone wrote: »

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/investing/article-1718291/Pick-best-cheapest-investment-Isa-platform.html
Alliance Trust Savings
Alliance Trust is another of the Isa players offering to refund all trail commission, as well as discounting many initial charges down to 0%.
Its range of funds is not as wide as some rivals but it does offer access to the full run of investment trusts, shares, ETFs and direct bonds available. Investors using it can access research and tools from Morningstar with their portfolio.
Its £25 annual charge delivers one free trade worth £12.50. But on the flipside, it does charge a flat £12.50 per trade for buying funds, shares, ETFs and investment trusts. However, doing this as regular monthly online direct debit investing slashes the charge to £1.50 per deal, while dividend reinvestment costs £5
Who is it good for? Buy-and-hold investors looking to boost their fund performance by cutting commission and still access shares, corporate bonds and ETFs. It is good for monthly regular share, investment trust and ETF investors too. [More details on Alliance Trust Savings Isa]
Might suit?

Interesting, thanks xylophone for the information. Some of the investment trusts you can deal with directly and they will DRIP for you at 0.5% of the total value of the cash dividend (such as Aberforth), but I wouldn't be doing this within my ISA as I would want a range of different IT's with different companies - I can see I am going to need a spreadsheet to work out all my options!

BLB53

Thanks for your response. I was thinking of using iii, now with the charges being applied, this doesn't sound a sensible option. Halifax do regular monthly investments, I suppose I could use this kind of vechile for purchasing. Selftrade also offer this option. I need to sit down and work out all the associated costs involved and calculate the cheapest options.

Sippdeal may be the cheapest option - £9.95 dealing fee and no annual charges.

Newbie2saving

BLB53 wrote: »

Sippdeal may be the cheapest option - £9.95 dealing fee and no annual charges.

Looks interesting, do they offer all IT's? Wishful thinking, bet they don't do the Vantage Lifestyle I want to invest my other pot in!

Thanks for all your help BLB53.

BLB53

Looks interesting, do they offer all IT's? Wishful thinking, bet they don't do the Vantage Lifestyle I want to invest my other pot in!

I'm fairly sure they will offer the Vanguard range BUT they will charge £9.95 to buy AND there is a quarterly £12.50 'custody fee' so a bit prohibitive on low cost funds.
They do the full range of ITs and you might just want to check out the dividend reinvestment charges (if thats what you will be doing with the divis).
Good luck!

Newbie2saving

As a newish investor there are so many things to consider and research, appreciate everyones input. Im sure I will be back with more questions, when I have made my investments I will give an update.

Thanks again.

Hydromancer

Just my two cents, I would suggest that you have a look at Aberdeen Asian Smaller or Scottish Oriental Smaller instead of Schroder Oriental. I'm also curious as to why you've dropped Murray International and Lindsell Train from your short list as they are both excellent.

Newbie2saving

Hydromancer wrote: »

Just my two cents, I would suggest that you have a look at Aberdeen Asian Smaller or Scottish Oriental Smaller instead of Schroder Oriental. I'm also curious as to why you've dropped Murray International and Lindsell Train from your short list as they are both excellent.

Appreciate the comments, thanks. I have since had a shake up and on further investigation added in Aberdeen Asia Smaller Companies and Murray International into my list. Initially Murray Int was removed as I had started this whole plan out with the intention of buying FTSE 100 shares, now it has gone to IT's I wanted it still to have that focus, but I realise now that would not provide the ideal balance. Murray Int is back on the list, now down to 8.

I will do some further comparisons within the Asia Pacific sector as you suggest.

FYI I dropped Lindsell Train on the reason it had ebay and nintendo high % holdings, which I didn't really like, it is also an expensive IT to purchase.

Newbie2saving

Hi all,

Thanks to all of you for your input to date. My list now looks like this;

Schroder Oriental (will look at other IT's in this sector also)
Aberforth Smaller Co's
Murray Int
Merchants
JPM American
City of London
Aberdeen Asia
Edinburgh Inv IT

Got rid of Witan and Murray Inc as I ran the Morningstar X ray and they clashed on holding overlaps too highly with Merchants and Murray Int.

Initally I had thought of splitting this yrs ISA allowance into top ups on existing funds, Vantage Lifestyle and IT's. I am now finding it difficult to remove a few of the ITs from the list so may take them out of the ISA lump sum and invest seperately and then ISA them next year so that I can have all 8. I haven't made any final decisions, I am still looking at holdings / sectors / costs before going any further.

TCA

I've been having a read through the Morningstar analyst ratings for investment trusts. Makes for interesting reading, although some don't correlate to the website's star rating. Most of the OP's choices are rated. Click into whichever fund then into "analyst research" for the detailed report:

http://tools.morningstar.co.uk/uk/cefquickrank/default.aspx?Site=UK&Universe=FCGBR%24%24ALL&lang=en-GB&LanguageId=en-GB

I know it's all about opinions, but has anyone got any views as to how useful these reports are?