Whats your S&S ISA Portfolio? (Winners and Losers)

srcandas

Bit like bowlhead just tinkering. Moved a little China Opps fund to Indonesia fund.

Sold Severn & Trent and had a nibble at Debenhams on yesterday's drop.

Holding 12% cash. Would like some UK shares but nothing appeals at the moment so I'll wait.

Awaiting Sirius potash planning application result

IronWolf

I sold one stock, Arrow Electronics. After being in the red ever since I bought it, it finally got into black, and due to recent results I think it was about fair value so I sold it to break even. My current portfolio's on my blog here http://iwantistrive.com/portfolio/

moneylover

bowlhead99 wrote: »

As my last post was only a month ago, the portfolio looks pretty much the same, it is generally up along with global markets.

On the funds / investment trusts side, Scottish Oriental Smaller Cos is currently up to +42% since I got in last August. So this has had a very good run, along with other EM funds in the last 6 months, but particularly so. It is an investment trust so the share price is driven by sentiment in the market in addition to the underlying NAV. The NAV hasn't increased by 42% but the pricing has gone from being a discount to NAV to being a premium to NAV.

I have taken some money out of this one in the last few days, as buying at a discount and selling at a premium is obviously a good thing and while I still want to keep an exposure to Asian smaller companies, the recent NAV rise and discount elimination makes it less compelling. I have reduced the total value to the same cash amount I originally put in, which in percentage terms is smaller than its original weight (because the overall portfolio is up).

The proceeds released from this have gone partially into some more Lloyds preference shares (they are not the crazy bargain they were a year ago, but both classes are still yielding 7.8%) and partially onto the sidelines as cash.

Hello, I think this is an impressive post, very useful for me and probably others who are still feeling our way around various different asset classes

Can you telll me how much the discount was roughly when you bought into Scottish Oriental and what the premium is now? This was an investment I was thinking about but maybe missed the boat....I prefer ITs to funds although I do buy funds too. Perhaps I should wait for retrenchment. Is there currency gains on Scottish Oriental?

I am even more interested in the Lloyds preference shares. In particular how you buy them and what the spread is and commission you pay - its always put me off as I dont know what I should be paying as obviously it takes a bit off returns. Is it taxed as a dividend before you get the income? If so, for me I wouldnt bother putting it in my ISA as am a retired basic rate tax payer. I would use HL to buy.

socrates

Below is my Account Summary from HL - looks like JP Morgan has got to go - any advice for this years allocation more than welcome £11k to spend

Aberdeen Asia Pacific Wealth 150 fund A Accumulation +18.59%

Cazenove UK Smaller Companies Wealth 150 fund Class B Accumulation +33.28%

First State Asia Pacific Leaders Wealth 150 fund Class A Income Units +17.57%

JPMorgan Natural Resources Wealth 150 fund Income Units
-26.45

MFM Slater Growth Accumulation +15.98%

Newton Asian Income Wealth 150 fund Income +19.58

Newton Global Higher Income Wealth 150 fund Income +14.25%

Standard Life UK Equity Unconstrained Wealth 150 fund Accumulation +33.46%

Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Equity GBP Income +11.62%

Vanguard LifeStrategy 80% Equity GBP Income +11.66%

stringer_bell

AXA FRAMLINGTON BIOTECH R ACC +51.42

One year performance

Mr_Curious

I'm about to to start a S&S ISA next week. Im thinking something along the lines of:

HSBC American Index fund 10%
HSBC European Index fund 10%
HSBC FTSE All-Share Index 20%
HSBC Japan Index fund 10%
HSBC Pacific Index fund 10%
HSBC UK Gilt Index fund 15%
BlackRock Corporate Bond Tkr A 15%
BlackRock Emerging Markets Eq Tkr A 10%

All comments/criticisms welcome

bowlhead99

moneylover wrote: »

Hello, I think this is an impressive post, very useful for me and probably others who are still feeling our way around various different asset classes

Hi, sorry I didn't notice your question for a month. I think it's always interesting to see what others have got, there's always a huge variation in how people allocate a portfolio - emerging / global developed / UK, highly specialist sectors or regions, largecap or smallcap, equities or high yield corporate bonds or investment grade bonds or government gilts or commodities or realestate or cash... or something else?!

Obviously some people quite actively try and judge what they have against what they could have and what they think the respective markets will do. Others buy and hold a bit of everything, do not try to second guess the markets, and then rebalance back to their original ratios when one part of their portfolio has grown compared to another. The first approach is potentially more rewarding and satisfiying to get right, but much riskier. I do elements of both - the portfolio I posted is only one of my accounts and not something to copy!

Can you telll me how much the discount was roughly when you bought into Scottish Oriental and what the premium is now? This was an investment I was thinking about but maybe missed the boat....I prefer ITs to funds although I do buy funds too. Perhaps I should wait for retrenchment. Is there currency gains on Scottish Oriental?

I bought 7 August last year and paid 6.219, the published NAV the next morning was 6.64. So a 6.3% effective discount. The headline discount would be a bit bigger than that, comparing bid price of the share with the NAV, but when you're buying you pay the offer price which is always a few pence higher than the bid and so the discount you get is a bit lower than the headline that might be reported in a magazine article or by someone on a forum.

I sold on 26 Feb and 5 March at 8.80 and 8.96 which were at 2% and 2.7% premiums respectively.

Latest published NAV is for this Thursday's closing NAV (published Friday) of 8.81 ; if I had been selling on Thursday late afternoon I would have sold for bid price of 8.81 (0%). If I'd been buying, because of the spread, I'd have had to pay 8.85 or about 0.45% premium.

With the 5 March sale I made a profit of 44%, while the NAV improvement had only been 31.3%

Looking back a bit further, it would have been possible to buy for only £4.96 on 4/10/2011 at a 10% discount, and then cash out 5 March, for an 80% profit in under 18 months (against 'only' 59% NAV improvement). Clearly discounts and premiums can significantly help or hinder your returns but in reality nobody will catch the top and the bottom. If you had the balls to invest on 1/12/2008, you would have got a 24% discount buying in at 170p... but the discount is neither here nor there in the context of it being worth nearly 9 quid these days.

You asked about currency gains. The share in the investment trust is priced in pounds and you buy and sell in pounds. So you don't necessarily see any currency gain directly (it's not like buying a fund for a dollar and selling it for a dollar but only paying 65p and getting back 67p).

However, yes the NAV performance has been helped by currency movement. Sterling is generally weaker than it was 6 months ago. Therefore if the underlying investments in individual small asian companies have been assessed as being worth the same amount of Hong Kong Dollars or Chinese Yuan / Renminbi or US dollars as they were in August last year, that will translate as the fund having more assets measured in pounds sterling. Because HKD and USD went up 3.7% and CNY went up 6%+ against GBP in the period I was talking about.

So when I say the NAV of the fund went up 31%, that's a GBP figure and ultimately drives what another person will pay me in pounds to take the shares off my hands, but the underlying chinese companies only think they are 24% more valuable when measured in their own currencies.

I am even more interested in the Lloyds preference shares. In particular how you buy them and what the spread is and commission you pay - its always put me off as I dont know what I should be paying as obviously it takes a bit off returns. Is it taxed as a dividend before you get the income? If so, for me I wouldnt bother putting it in my ISA as am a retired basic rate tax payer. I would use HL to buy.

The reported spread between buy and sell is usually about 4p or so. All Friday, LLPC (Lloyds pref 9.25%) had a bid price of 119.5p and an offer of 124p. If you were wanting to place an order for 1000 shares, you'd need enough in your trading account to pay 124p x 1000 = £1240, plus stamp duty at half a percent on the £1240 (£6.20), plus the dealing fee (about £12 with HL I think, or perhaps half that if you are a frequent trader). So you might need nearly £1260 in the account for them to accept your order.

In reality, trades generally go through well within that bid-offer range - you might get over 120p when selling, and hardly any trades published Friday went through at over 122p. The actual price is driven by underlying demand. I've bought for less than the mid price before (see this thread) .

So lets say you bought 1000 prefs and paid say £1225. If Lloyds stay solvent you get £92.50 a year dividends. This is 7.55% of what you paid for them. In reality, you don't wait a year for the 92.50, you get half at the end of May and half at end of November. This is better than getting 7.55% per year. In fact paying £1225 on Monday, getting 46.25 on 31 May, getting 46.25 on 30 Nov, and getting your £1225 back a year from now, your effective ÍRR is 7.93%. This ignores bid-offer spread and broker fee and the fact it's impractical to reinvest only 48 quid of dividends with broker fees of a tenner or more every time, but you probably see the point.

You're right, if HL is your broker of choice, you're better to hold outside an ISA, because there is no further tax to pay on the 92.50 divs as a basic rate taxpayer, and the capital value of the shares is not going to double (from here) and give you a huge capital gains tax bill - because preference shares only give you rights to this income stream, not ownership of the bank. And HL, unlike some other platforms, would charge you an annual % fee if you held shares in an ISA.

The answer might have been different a couple of years ago when Lloyds had frozen dividends, and the shares could be picked up for 60p. Then it would have been very possible to double your money on the capital value of the shares as they moved to today's price, as well as picking up a 15%+ yield on the purchase price once the dividends restarted. For large purchases, ISA protection would have been good for the CGT aspect (but still no benefit on the divs side, for a basic rate payer).

I still hold LLPC in my ISA and SIPP (and also LLPD which is the 9.75% version). The yield is nice and pref dividend is lower risk than a 'normal' equity dividend, but clearly you lose the equity upside potential at the same time you remove the equity downside potential. Also this is riskier than holding a bond and pref share- based income fund, as any single-company investment is. If the yield fell much more or the interest rate/inflation environment changed, I would be reconsidering.

And I still hold Scottish Oriental Smaller Cos (but not as much as I had last year). But my comments on these investments are to try and help explain investment trusts and preference shares, rather than to recommend anyone buy them.

moneylover

@bowlhead99
I don't think I will ever know enough to be able to write the sort of post you have just written. thank you so much

mark13

Axa Fram Biotech 11%
CAzenove UK Smaller companies 14%
Fidelity EMEA - 11%
Fidelity Global Divi. -11%
Fidelity India Focus - 11%
Ignis Bond - 15%
Legg Mason Japan - 12%
Neptune China - 10%
Standard Life UK REcov. - 5%

pennyspounds

Hi All,
I am looking for some advice. My Clerical Medical Investment Bond increased by 9% last year. It commenced in 2006. I took it out on the advice of a financial advisor who said it was low risk however it has lost in previous years. Is it a good and safe investment to keep for the next 7 years or should I be looking elsewhere? It comprises of Newton Higher Income Life, IP High Income life, Fidelity Moneybuilder Income Life and UK Property. Im afraid I dont understand much about it and how it works. I just want my money to be as safe as possible and make as much interest as it can. Its currently worth just over £63k. What do you think ?