Sanity Check

TCA

JohnRo wrote: »

Trade Date - Settlement Date - Units - Cost(£) - Price(p)

Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Inc (0.25% dilution levy)

27/09/12 - 03/10/12 - 0.69 - 100 - 14,359.14

Morning star list unit prices for this particular fund between those dates as follows

27/09/12 - 142.6573
28/09/12 - 143.5919
01/10/12 - 144.0009
02/10/12 - 144.2508
03/10/12 - 144.2971

Anyway, can anyone tell me where I'm getting this price/cost thing wrong?

JohnRo, did you place your above trade on the evening of 27th? Just looking at the price you appear to have obtained and it looks closer to that of the 28th.

I'm trying to work out how the timing works from actual purchase to what price you get. Are your Vanguard funds all priced at midday?

JohnRo

The problem I have (if any) with best invest is their platform is really very basic and everything is rounded to 2 decimal places. The login time out is irritating too but in the long term I won't be checking it very often, which is obviously the type of punter they're geared to.

At the moment when inputting data to morning star from BI I need to,

first check there is no additional bid offer spread on their price,
then check if there's any dilution levy,
then check their stated price (2 decimal places)
then look at the order date and settlement date
then try to find a match using MS prices and taking the above into account

as for initiating a purchase and getting an order date appear in their pending/completed transaction list, it seems to vary by a day or two or sometimes longer and the lead time on vanguard trackers seems especially long to me but some others too. It all just seems a bit hit and miss to me at the moment, I can't decipher any fixed pattern to any of it.

I'm starting to realise you probably do get just what you pay for when it comes to platforms, that's not a complaint about BI.

The BI platform portal seems to show everything up to the previous day, but I'm not certain. I just haven't logged in often enough to work out exactly when things are updated.
My October "monthly savings" tracker auto purchases were shown on their transaction list as "order date initiated" as 25th in pending orders. When the completed list below it started being populated by those orders the "trade date" changed to anything from the 30th and still counting, I am showing 3 vanguard trackers still pending today, initiated on the 25th, some showed up as completed yesterday and the day before and possibly these 3 still pending will show tomorrow (ie completed today)

Checking prices with morning star is a real faff though and I can't see me doing that for much longer, I'm just going to have to start trusting they aren't ripping me off with their pricing. The amounts involved are tiny, thankfully, but I'm having real trouble accounting for some of the unit costs, the Blackrock tracker especially even with the updated 0.32% spread.

If their platform would only display the units I hold, to 4 decimal places, it would help a lot with price checking.

TCA

I took the plunge with BI on Thursday and purchased funds at about 10:40 am on that day. Wasn't seeing any purchases even as of yesterday, so went to online chat and asked some questions.

I was told that dealing is done at midday and I was too late for the trades to be done on the Thursday. You have to initiate the trades before 7am to 9am for them to go through same day. Not sure why they'd give a range of times but ok, fair enough. As it happens my funds still aren't showing as of today (Saturday), despite my account apparently showing "Fund values as at 02/11/2012" and the settlement date in my account showing as 02/11/2012. So I wait on.

I also asked about the monthly plan as I wanted to know when I needed funds in my account for the direct debit on 25th of each month. Just in case (because of the BACS system or whatever), they needed to be showing a couple of days before. Anyway, monies in place on 24th is early enough. Fine. So I asked therefore if trades were therefore placed on the 25th and was told yes. But not according to what their website says:

"Payments leave your bank account on, or shortly after, the 25th of each month and your investment orders will be placed 2 working days later."

And from what JohnRo is saying, even that doesn't seem to be the case, for Vanguard trackers anyway.

I think I'll just place my monthly deals manually as I need to transfer money to my current account every month anyway. It's just as easy to trade when the money arrives as I'm only making 5 trades per month.

As for pricing, I'll have a look at the first few settlements when they eventually appear, but it sounds pretty horrendous, so won't be monitoring much after that.

JohnRo

As predicted my last 3 pending vanguard trackers, initiated on the 25th Oct were finally listed as completed transactions today.

They show a trade date of 31st Oct for two and 1st Nov for the other, that's 6-7 days to book them in, the others completed a day quicker. I still can't spot any pattern to the timing of these things but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. I'll just accept it for what it is, I chose best invest for the costs of investing not for their accounting clarity and platform features.

I'll stick with the monthly plan as it's a minimum £50 a pop instead of the £100 minimum if purchased manually, that allows me to hold back cash for investing on a large fall as and when any might happen. It also keeps the used ISA allowance down a bit and since all these trackers are income generating LTBH I'm in no hurry to change any of the plans I detailed up thread.

saveonarola

TCA wrote: »

As for pricing, I'll have a look at the first few settlements when they eventually appear, but it sounds pretty horrendous, so won't be monitoring much after that.

TCA, can I ask what you mean by this? I signed up with Bestinvest assuming that all brokers were pretty much the same, once you'd accounted for trading and account-holding fees and which funds they offered. You guys seem to have looked into this a lot more closely than me!

TCA

saveonarola wrote: »

TCA, can I ask what you mean by this? I signed up with Bestinvest assuming that all brokers were pretty much the same, once you'd accounted for trading and account-holding fees and which funds they offered. You guys seem to have looked into this a lot more closely than me!

I was only referring to the troubles experienced by JohnRo in confirming fund prices. I don't have any prices as of yet to consider.

Glen_Clark

gadgetmind wrote: »

Tweak based on fundamentals if you like. I do, and it's mostly worked, but it's gone badly at times too.

Same here because we only see part of the picture.
Like M&S today - announced a 10% drop in profits and the shares rose.

TCA

JohnRo wrote: »

The problem I have (if any) with best invest is their platform is really very basic and everything is rounded to 2 decimal places.

Some of my purchases are now showing, so have been investigating. If you hit the download button in the transactions section (within your B.I. account) you'll get an excel spreadsheet with exact unit numbers and prices. I managed to agree exact prices via Bloomberg for my trades for 3 of the 4 funds showing. The exception being VANGUARD GLOBAL SMALL-CAP INDEX Acc and I think maybe something to do with the fact that it's Irish domiciled and priced at a different time? No idea, but the prices showing for it in Bloomberg, Yahoo and wherever else I can find it, do not agree over any of the price points on or either side of the trade date. Baffled.

Still waiting on info for Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund despite it being the same trade date as the rest. They all show settlement date of tomorrow!

JohnRo

Yep, there appears no reliable pattern to the timing of trades. Prices seem OK for vanguard trackers, it was the Blackrock property tracker I couldn't pin down. Perhaps there's an intermediary making the deals for BI and then relaying the information back to them.

https://www.vanguard.co.uk/adviser/adv/faqs-irish-domicile.jsp

TCA

JohnRo wrote: »

My core investment currently looks like this...............

ABERDEEN GLOBAL EMERGING MARKETS SMALLER COS D2 GBP Acc

I'm thinking I'm a bit light on emerging markets small company exposure (given my Vanguard tracker is developed world only), so thinking about the above fund.

From a few hours of digging it looks to be one of the best around but it still seems to be predominantly mid cap. 13% large, 66% mid and 21% small cap, from what I can gather.

Anybody got any other suggestions/recommendations of emerging markets small cap funds? I found others by JPM, Schroder, Ashmore, PFS Somerset and Templeton but Aberdeen still looks favourite.