S&S ISA critique please?

grizzly1911

Totton wrote: »

Two funds I quite like at the moment which may offer something different for you are Ruffer Equity & General and Odey Absolute UK, note that the Odey fund is shortly due to lose the UK part and become Global.

I have seen Odey Absolute return mentioned in a few places.

Information/opinion seems a bit thin on the ground as do purchase routes.

They don't appear to operate like a more traditional absolute return. global would be good as I don't fancy any more UK equity for now.

grizzly1911

Totton wrote: »

Two funds I quite like at the moment which may offer something different for you are Ruffer Equity & General and Odey Absolute UK, note that the Odey fund is shortly due to lose the UK part and become Global.

I have seen Odey Absolute return mentioned in a few places.

Information/opinion seems a bit thin on the ground as do purchase routes.

They don't appear to operate like a more traditional absolute return. global would be good as I don't fancy any more 100% UK equity for now.

racing_blue

cornburn wrote: »

Hi all,

A few months ago I moved approx 1/3 of my total savings into a S&S ISA with Hargreaves Lansdown. I have all but £6k invested in the following, and am struggling to decide where to put the last £6k of my allowance. I thought I'd ask if any of the more knowledgeable can see an obvious gap that I could look into? At the moment I have £12k in funds & £5k in shares. Currently almost £600 down from 3 months ago :S Cheers!!

You made this post on 21st June and said that you were down £600 from 3 months ago, on a portfolio of £17k, a change of -3.5%

In that time, the FTSE 100 moved from 6475 (21st March) to 6116 (21st June), a change of -5.8%

Therefore you outperformed the FTSE, which itself outperforms the majority of fund managers. So maybe you were lucky, or maybe you need to keep doing exactly the same thing

(My guess is that you were lucky... sorry!)

bowlhead99

Totton wrote: »

If looking for Africa etc, then a read of the report on Templeton Emerging Markets may be worthwhile, last time I looked they were focusing more on frontier markets but I'm not sure now is a great time for being too adventurous :-)

I hold TEM too, and had it in mind when suggesting a general non-region-specific EM fund. It had a pretty good run over the first few months of this year and has fallen 15-20% since its March peak. So if you were looking to buy while it's relatively cheaper, you might still come a cropper but will be better off than someone who had their chequebook out a few months back.

It currently trades on a discount to NAV of 10% or so (was down to 8% or so back in March), and is basically no more expensive than it was 8-10 months ago before markets started their serious bull run.

It is important to recognise that a 10-20% movement in an emerging market fund in a few months is not crazy unusual. If I look back to Jan 2003, it was under a pound, got up to 6.80 earlier this year and now still over 5.5. So >5.5x cost is not a bad ten year performance, particularly considering we had a credit blip where it lost 55% in 6 months from May 08 to Nov 08 - a bigger loss in a faster time than the FTSE for example. Past performance is no guarantee of the future of course, I only mention the figures to give some context to the recent movements which in some types of investments would seem quite extreme. In EM they are more normal - and this is far from the most volatile EM fund around. An Africa-only fund would be even more so.

cornburn

Thanks all for the advice, Bowlhead - there's a lot of info there for me to take in so I've read it twice and will run through it again before making any decisions. Thank you for taking the time to write that for me, and for pulling me up on my logic behind the Tesco strategy, which made me laugh

I think as I'm obviously new to all this I'll forget anything "frontier" and too specific, and look for one EM fund and one bonds fund. I've looked at the TEM one you all mention and it does look like a reasonable price to be buying at so if the geographic spread of that is quite wide that could be a good choice. I would like to diversify a bit, and there aren't any areas I'm avoiding - it's purely lack of knowing what's out there.

Racing Blue - How dare you! Can't you tell from my posts so far I'm practically a full time pro trader! Luck indeed When I checked through your figures I can see the losses were pretty good actually at that point so maybe I should just keep going with my guy instinct if it's working £600 up today so the tables have turned again.

Odey Absolute doesn't seem to be available through Hargreaves Lansdown so that's not a consideration as I want everything in one place.

So, my decision now comes down to one EM fund and one non-equities investment. That will leave me with 8 funds in total, which I can redistribute as necessary once I know a bit more about what I'm doing! There's £6k left to invest to I'm thinking £2k in an EM and the remainder in something a bit more boring.

I'll run away and hide now shall I?....... :P

cornburn

bowlhead99 wrote: »

I hold TEM too, and had it in mind when suggesting a general non-region-specific EM fund. It had a pretty good run over the first few months of this year and has fallen 15-20% since its March peak. So if you were looking to buy while it's relatively cheaper, you might still come a cropper but will be better off than someone who had their chequebook out a few months back.

It currently trades on a discount to NAV of 10% or so (was down to 8% or so back in March), and is basically no more expensive than it was 8-10 months ago before markets started their serious bull run.

It is important to recognise that a 10-20% movement in an emerging market fund in a few months is not crazy unusual. If I look back to Jan 2003, it was under a pound, got up to 6.80 earlier this year and now still over 5.5. So >5.5x cost is not a bad ten year performance, particularly considering we had a credit blip where it lost 55% in 6 months from May 08 to Nov 08 - a bigger loss in a faster time than the FTSE for example. Past performance is no guarantee of the future of course, I only mention the figures to give some context to the recent movements which in some types of investments would seem quite extreme. In EM they are more normal - and this is far from the most volatile EM fund around. An Africa-only fund would be even more so.

Is the TEM you refer to the bond or the shares? I've done a search and found they have all these;

B3L6K29 Templeton Emerging Markets Bond A (QDis) GBP
2883287 Templeton Emerging Markets Fund Com Stk USD0.01
2884138 Templeton Emerging Markets Income Com Stk USD0.01
TEM Templeton Emerging Markets Inv Tst plc Ordinary 25p
B28G4Y5 Templeton Emerging Markets Smaller Companies A Distribution GBP
3400919 Templeton Global Emerging Markets Class A Accumulation

Any pointers as to which would be best? cheers

Drp8713

I have a complete novice question regarding the HL S&S ISA/Sipp

If I pay a regular £50 a month in, can I pick say

Fund A 40%
Fund B 40%
Company A 20%

And each month they will split it as per my wish? Or does it all go in as cash and I have to allocate it from there?

Do you then pay charges each time more is invested in those funds or only if you change funds/ buy or sell shares

cornburn

Drp8713 wrote: »

I have a complete novice question regarding the HL S&S ISA/Sipp

You need to start your own thread then, or ring them yourselves and ask!

Drp8713

Or somebody could just help like they did with you.

cornburn

They could - but it would just take my thread more off topic and push my last (on topic) post further up the page. Just start your own thread, what's the big deal? I can't help you