Building/Maintaining a ISA Shares portfolio

Franko43

Hi All

I’m in the process of building myself up a portfolio. I started in Janurary with CoFunds and I’ve now got 5 in total at £1K a pop. 2 UK Higher Income, 1 China, 1 Russia + 1 Property. I’ve got a couple of general questions I’d like to fire out to you. There are no right/wrong answers as everyone’s circumstances are different but:

• Ideally how many funds do you have in your portfolio?
• What do you do with the returns made on these?

dunstonh

Ideally how many funds do you have in your portfolio?

With small amounts, its worth looking at £1000 per fund and stay that way until you can build up to in excess of £25k where it is easiser to build a more structured portfolio.

What do you do with the returns made on these?

If you are working in the £1k per fund approach then when it grows so the value of all the funds are £1k higher in total, then switch the surpluses of each fund into a new fund. That new fund can be above, below or the same as your risk profile depending on your views at the time.

Franko43

Dunstonh - after the 25K is built up. What's the approach after that? Consolidate into fewer larger funds

jamesd

About 12-15 funds is right for me and most of what I hold is in accumulation units, the rest I'll reinvest.

To see how you could consider building a set of fund investments read this discussion.

dunstonh

Over 25k, you can realistically build a proper sector allocated portfolio. You can do it with some providers with less than that but before its rough rule of thumb.

Ideally you should spread more on the riskier sectors (specialist and emerging markets for example). On the lower risk end (eg bricks and mortar property) you dont need as much of a spread.