SE trackers

Forever

CharlieRoberts wrote: »

I don' know enough about the other regions to bet on them despite high yields in recet years in many emerging markets, many of these countries are still highly volatile and I haven't seen any with a long term permanenet track record.

No-one was talking about the OP investing in emerging markets.

It was first suggested to invest in a tracker of trackers ie Vanguard Lifestyle which invests in a number of trackers at the same time. These are reasonably cheap too. Last time I looked, the US was its current main focus with other sectors like UK, Japan, Europe, Asia etc having a much smaller exposure. However, they can change their main tracker focus if things (inevitably) change. Therefore, following this type of tracker lessens the volatility of a single sector tracker because it can switch to the strongest leading sector and away from the weakest.

It was also suggested to perhaps take a mixed asset fund which invests across equity and bonds, sometimes in different countries and sometimes in gold. However the OP feels these are too expensive. Which is a reasonable argument. Again, these remove volatility with some taking a very defensive stance to try to prevent any negative losses during any stock market crashes.

However it looks like the OP feels more confident with a single sector risk. This is fine but its just that stock markets can crash at any time and so the OP could see big drops in his/her investment. But if this is what he/she wants, this is what he/she wants I guess

Edit: Noticing SavingFish's disclaimer below; I am not in any way qualified to give financial advice too.

SavingFish

I'd agree that if your aim is to reduce risk then diversifying is likely to work out better. Fortunately, with 'fund of funds' products like LifeStrategy, diversifying doesn't have to involve any extra legwork (and they're pretty darned cheap in terms of fees as well).

One of the advantages of trackers (and funds containing multiple trackers) is that they remove the 'human emotion' element from investing. Have a read around websites like Monevator if you haven't already.

Also, just a note to say that I've been lurking around these forums much longer than I've been posting. The fact we have a couple of IFAs helping out for free on these boards is awesome. Advice is just that, you're free to listen to it or to ignore it (myself, I'm very grateful to these people). Any suggestion that they might be touting for business is crazy talk (that sort of behavior gets clamped down on pretty quickly around here when it does happen).

Disclaimer: I'm not in any way qualified to give financial advice, in fact I probably fit into the category of "a little knowledge is dangerous" (but it's worked out ok for me so far).