Stocks and Shares ISA - do these funds look ok?

ZombieAlex

I haven't invested in a Stocks and Shares ISA before as I've primarily focussed on cash ISAs. I have enough saved that I'm comfortable taking a level of risk so I want to invest in a few funds for the 2013 tax year. I've picked out a few funds which I plan to hold in a Cavendish Online wrapper:

HSBC Pacific Index (accumulation) - 0.41% TER
HSBC American Index (accumulation) - 0.28% TER
HSBC FTSE All Share (accumulation) - 0.28% TER
Aberdeen Emerging Markets (Accumulation) - 1.68% TER

I plan on splitting my contributions evenly amongst these funds and paying in £480 per month for the year. Are there any quirks I should know about before committing to this?

ColdIron

The Aberdeen fund starts to charge a 2% initial fee from next month

ZombieAlex

ColdIron wrote: »

The Aberdeen fund starts to charge a 2% initial fee from next month

Ok thanks for the warning. I have found another fund that has had similar performance and a slightly better TER:

First State Global Emerging Mkt Leaders - TER 1.56%

innovate

Even 1.56% sounds massive. There are plenty of Emerging Market ETFs which come at half price or less.

Shaolin_Monkey

I'm glad I'm invested in First State GEM Leaders rather than an MSCI EM tracker as the First State fund has massively outperformed the index. Sometimes active management is worth paying for.

Perelandra

innovate wrote: »

Even 1.56% sounds massive. There are plenty of Emerging Market ETFs which come at half price or less.

Of that 1.56%, 0.5% will receive Cavendish's annual rebate, so it's not as bad as it looks.

While I don't invest in this fund, it certainly has its supporters.

EDIT: It looks like only the "B" class can be bought through Cavendish Fidelity now (this is the clean class), where the total charge will now be 1.16% (so 0.1% higher than the "A" class).

takesyourchances

ZombieAlex wrote: »

Ok thanks for the warning. I have found another fund that has had similar performance and a slightly better TER:

First State Global Emerging Mkt Leaders - TER 1.56%

I recently took out the First State EM fund and was looking at the Aberdeen fund also and opted for the First State due to the new increase happening with Aberdeen.

Good luck.

Martinslovechild

I'm a fan of the First State Global Emerging Market Leaders fund too, though my most successful fund has to be the Aberdeen New Thai Investment Trust.

ZombieAlex

On the subject of classes I noticed that the HSBC trackers either come with no class listed or as class C. From what I can tell the class C ones have a different charging structure where the TER is lower but there may be a platform charge. I couldn't find any information on Cavendish about those trackers. Does anyone know if they do levy a platform charge?

Martinslovechild

You might want to check out MorningStar's website, it gives lots of details on individual fund performance, costs etc.

Robert99

Also There a number of free portfolios builders on the market that allow you to work out risk, asset allocation and cost on the whole portfolio as well as fund selection (you will need to register to save a portfolio)

http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/portfoliomanager/portfolio.aspx
http://www.trustnet.com/Tools/Portfolio/PortfolioHome.aspx
https://www.rplan.co.uk/portfolios
http://www.citywire.co.uk/money/my-citywire/portfolio.aspx