advice to start S&S portfolio

osmonddiva

I wanted to start investing in stocks and shares with a view to holding on to them for 5+ years. I have cash ISA for savings already. I would prefer a managed plan with low to med risk. I want to start of with around 1K and monthly feed of between 100 - 200. Tried to look into this myself but was bamboozled with all the charges etc.

Has anyone ideas on where would be best for a novice to begin investing.

Any

I am assuming you are looking at funds etc (rather then shares)?
It is certainly not the only one on the market, but H&L have balance managed ISAs..
Their ISA is mainly free, but you pay charges for the fund holdings (going to the manager). I say mainly because you pay monthly fee for some of the trackers (though I for example don't hold single one that charges this, you can avoid it).

Have a look here, these are their master portfolios:
http://www.hl.co.uk/funds/master-portfolios

I am a bit more adventurous so I take ideas from reading up on articles and stuff like that and pick my own funds, you could certainly do that once you get more comfortable too.

Here is more about their charges (H&L I mean, each fund have their own): http://www.hl.co.uk/investment-services/isa

The most notable thing about fund charges are:
Initial investment charge - deducted before your money buys units in the fund, though most brokers have discounts on those (I never pay any with H&L)

Annual management charge - charge the manager of the fund charges for his expertise

then there could be also manager's expenses charge... but all that is written in each fund's detailed specification.

Here it is explained a bit better:
http://www.investoo.co.uk/tips/buy-funds/fund-charges-explained/

osmonddiva

Thanks for your helpful reply. That gives me more info to think about.

BLB53

Has anyone ideas on where would be best for a novice to begin investing.

Probably best to do some reading - good places to start would be the free blogs - https://www.monevator.com also RIT has some interesting articles http://www.retirementinvestingtoday.com/ and also diy investor http://www.diyinvestoruk.blogspot.co.uk/

Probably best to look at low cost trackers eg Vanguard Lifestrategy as the core of your investment strategy and possibly look at smaller companies investment trust.