Stocks & Shares ISAs

Money_Saving_Dude

Five golden rules of investing:

1. The greater return you want, the more risk you'll usually have to accept.
2. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Try to diversify as much as you can to lower your risk exposure.
3. If you're saving over the short-term, it's wise not to take too much of a risk. It's recommended you invest for at least five years. If you can't, cash is often best.
4. Review your portfolio. A fund might be a dud, a fund manager might leave, or you might not be willing to take as many risks as you did before. If you don't review your portfolio regularly, you could end up with a stocks & shares ISA which loses money.
5. Don't panic. Investments can go down as well as up. Don't be tempted to sell or buy funds just because everyone else is.

These seem silly rules to me. If I had to give some rules they would be:

• Don't have debts. Get rid of your debts before you think about investing. Got debts? DON'T READ ON. Get rid of them first!
• Get an emergency pot of money together before you invest. If you need to touch your savings to pay for an emergency (unexpected bill -- you must work out what that is) this pot will be used for that.
• Do your own research (DYOR). There is a lot of very useful, free information on the Internet.
• Don't get taken by the active management spin. Unless you REALLY know what you are doing (and many who think they do really DON'T) stick with a tracker fund.
• Invest and forget. Don't keep looking at the value every five minutes. Look every month, or better three months. Patience and inactivity are really the watchwords of investment.
• Fees really matter -- I'd certainly be looking at something less than 0.5%; that pokes it in the eye for many actively managed funds. A growth of 4.5% is massively more than a growth of 4% over 10 years. Again, read up on this so you understand WHY that 0.5% matters.
• Diversification is your only free lunch, so do it (I use the Vangaurd LifeStrategy funds because they are cheap, diversified and easy; again, read up if you need to know more).

I'm sure I could go on. But the Internet is your friend, and there are many out there trying to get your money. Remember NOBODY KNOWS THE FUTURE. Nobody. So these 'experts' are just a waste of space. Don't pay for any advice -- just take your time and read and learn.

Investing is easy, but it takes time. You can get rich quick if you're really very lucky; but you will lose lots if you try (unless you are really, really lucky).

Get rich slowly, but get rich!!

Brand

blahblahdoh wrote: »

. . . . The best value trading ISA I can find through online searching is x-o.co.uk, which isn't even mentioned here. It has some limitations, but seems OK for the average punter looking for a UK shares ISA. There's a good, albeit ancient, review here: http://www.candidmoney.com/candidreviews/33/x-ocouk-online-share-dealing-review
Anyone have experience of this one? I'm considering it.

I have used x-o.co.uk for several years and it is fine. £5.95 commission is as cheap as is viable without a set-up fee and and annual fee. (One company tried £4.95 and went out of business.) It is the execution-only side of Jarvis Investment Management.
It is a stockbroker-type ISA, not a fund supermarket-type ISA. It does not offer purchases on foreign stock exchanges. The order ticket for buying and selling seems to keep asking for password, but it works fine with a little patience. Contract notes as pdfs are received by email. Corporate action paperwork is sent in the post, which some customers will like. It offers limit orders but no regular saving. For a very small investor like me, using it for £1,000 a time UK-listed ETFs, Investment trusts and shares, it should be fine. There is no demo account, but you can open a non-ISA stockbroking account if you want to try out the website before transferring in your ISA.

adindas

I will have cash ISA around £15,000 by the middle of April 2015,. I am considering to convert it to S&S ISA by investing in fuind. I have seen that the current highest interest rate for cash ISA is 1.5% which is not attractive enough to me.

I might need the cash within less than five years or planning to move it to another fund depends on the future circumstances, so I will be choosing a low platform and trading fee such as Cavendish online, A.J Bell, etc as explained in this link

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/stocks-shares-isas?_ga=1.142869427.782541970.1386260648


1) My question is how easy it is to transfers to transfer bit by bit from Cash ISA to S&S ISA ??

I am aware that doing it one go will mean that it will not spread the risk of the fund going up and down, But similarly buying it bit by bit will also mean the need to pay the buying fee which could be as high as £25 per transaction.

2) In your opinion should I convert this in lump sum of about £15,000 in one go or drip feeding monthly (say) ?? What other pro - contra I am not aware of by doing this ??

3) How complicated it is if you see a better fund and transfer your existing S&S fund to another Fund, here I the time needed to spend n doing this ? I am already aware that there will be fund exit fee + transaction fee.

Thank you for your time. Your opinion will be much appreciated.

AlanP_2

adindas wrote: »

I will have cash ISA around £15,000 by the middle of April 2015,. I am considering to convert it to S&S ISA by investing in fuind. I have seen that the current highest interest rate for cash ISA is 1.5% which is not attractive enough to me.

I might need the cash within less than five years or planning to move it to another fund depends on the future circumstances, so I will be choosing a low platform and trading fee such as Cavendish online, A.J Bell, etc as explained in this link

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/stocks-shares-isas?_ga=1.142869427.782541970.1386260648


My question is how easy it is to transfers to transfer bit by bit from Cash ISA to S&S ISA ??

I am aware that doing it one go will mean that it will not spread the risk of the fund going up and down, But similarly buying it bit by bit will also mean the need to pay the buying fee which could be as high as £25 per transaction. In your opinion should I convert this in lumpsumd of abut £15,000 in one go or drip feeding monthly (say) ?? What other pro contra I am bot aware of by doing this ??

Thank you for your time. Your opinion will be much appreciated.

If you want access to the cash in <5 years you would be taking a punt on the value of the funds at the time you need to sell them, they could easily be worth a lot less than you paid for them if markets moves against you and you are up against a "sell" deadline.

Interest paying current accounts will get you more than 1.5% e.g. Santander 1-2-3, TSB etc. without taking any investment risk.

Don't know about transferring bit by bit from Cash to S&S ISA as i haven't done it.

£25 per transaction sounds very, very high.

Cavendish Online is 0.3% of the sum invested from memory so your £15k would mean £45 per year to them (plus the underlying fund charges of 0.1% upwards).

Drip Feeding £15k over 12 months with a 5 year timescale means that you will only be fully invested for 4 years thus reducing your potential return even though it may reduce your potential loss.

Various studies have been done on this and they all seem to conclude that Time in the Market is the best strategy IF you can ride out a dip just after you bought that could last a good few years, again your <5 year time scale is against you here.

Do you think the value of the funds will increase over 5 years? If NO why buy them, if YES buy in one go and aim for the full 5 years growth on your £15k.


Whilst you consider your options do some research into funds and active / passive investing, asset diversification and the like.

Various threads on this site and good articles on monevator.com.

moellet

Hi all,
Can anyone recommend the best S+S ISA platform to use for both trading in shares and investing in tracker/ ETF funds?
I currently have a share dealing account with the Halifax, but they seem expensive for the ISA at £12.50 annual fee and the same for trading shares, and I believe it costs £2 each time if you want to pay a regular deposit.
I will probably be making about 10 trades per year.
Though as a basic rate tax payer, would I be better off just trading within my share dealing account, as I am unlikely to go above the CGT threshold!
So confused!!!
Appreciate any advice.

dunstonh

Can anyone recommend the best S+S ISA platform to use for both trading in shares and investing in tracker/ ETF funds?

That would be a regulated activity and no-one here can do that. However, they can discuss the merits of different platforms in a generic non-advised basis. i.e. plain discussion.

Based on various threads that go on with this board, it should not take you long to find out from your own reading.

moellet

Maybe I didn't explain myself very well.
I was interested in which platforms allow you to invest in funds and also trade in shares, investing a monthly sum for a reasonable fee.
I had already read all previous posts and looked on providers websites but it is not always clear which only let you invest in funds and which let you invest in both shares and funds.

Archi_Bald

Most people here use funds, and there's no list on MSE about platform functionality. Presumably you have come across this Monevator link when you read through all previous posts? It's the best summary I am aware of.

dunstonh

I was interested in which platforms allow you to invest in funds and also trade in shares, investing a monthly sum for a reasonable fee.

Most platforms do. It's only the fund supermarkets that dont.

Brand

Brand wrote: »

Just to update my posts above, the FTSE 100 has continued to move just sideways, not up, and is now at 6,700, roughly where it started 2014,
The long term average warning line, , though, is now only also at around 6700, so if it spends a week or so below 6,600, then for many people there will be flashing amber lights – or even red lights.
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=%5EFTSE&t=1y&l=off&z=l&q=l&p=m300&a=&c=

Again, just to update on the FTSE 100, which is still at only around 6,700 it is now below, not above, the long term average warning line, which is now at 6.750. https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=%5EFTSE&t=5y&l=off&z=l&q=l&p=m300&a=&c=
Of course 1. you have had dividends and 2. you may have used good fund managers who beat the FTSE 100.
the shape of the price move, however, looks very similar to that of early 2012, and the long drawn out and down movement of the FTSE over the last year makes it look to me like it wants to get a fair dip down out of the way, down, say, to 6,300 or even to 6,000.
That is stocks and shares investing for you!
I could be wrong, but I am not ploughing lots of money in all at once, but am putting little bits in monthly, and keeping some more back in case there is a very tempting dip and bounce after.
I can only say what I am doing, not what any of you should do, as I don't know your circumstances or risk tolerance, of course. You may decide a warning line is a strict warning line, so start selling a bit faster; Maybe some IFAs are suggesting that very thing, if they have not done so already.