Self administered pension

rallen1

I do not understand the smugness ("look at me, I am great investor") and the hostility ("you store cans in the cellar").

If you have nothing better to add, all you have to say is "I do not think we will ever see in the UK the measures that we are seeing in France, Greece and in Cyprus".

rallen1

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

on the specific point about how you can hold gold within a pension, i'm unsure why a physical ETF wouldn't do. (i can see why you'd want to avoid the counter-party risk of gold futures.)

you can hold commercial property directly in a SIPP if you have enough money in there to make it practical. if not, you can hold various forms of collective investments in property, with (similarly to physical gold ETFs) no counter-party risk - only a remote of risk of an outrageous fraud, in the event of which the FSCS should cover the first £50k of losses.

more broadly, a small % of a portfolio in gold may be defensible, but (if you have a 10+ year horizon) most of it should be in typically higher-return assets such as shares or property (both of which have inherent inflation-protection, at least on a long enough view). smaller amounts of lower-return assets (e.g. gold, cash, bonds, commodities) can add diversity.

I bought an ETF gold a few years ago (PHAU ETFS METAL SECURITIES LIMITED ETFS PHYSICAL GOLD). This is about 5% of my pension. But I have been hearing rumours that the actual gold does not exist and so on. Considering that the ETF pays no dividends and that I do not day trade, I cannot see an advantage over actually being the custodian myself. The ETF charges management fees every year and of course you have a counterparty the company behind the ETF as well as the custodian of the gold.

Commercial property sounds very interesting and I will read more about it. Unfortunately my SIPP provider does not allow for it which means I will have to move away from them.

An idea would be, if at all possible, to go for the self-administered scheme at the same time.