Best Stocks & Shares ISAs?

upperlayham

Hello All,

Was hoping for some recommendations on the Stocks & Shares ISA platforms with the lowest overall fees/charges?

Also any particular fund recommendations that have worked well for people? I would be looking at a medium risk investment.

Many thanks.

colsten

There is a very long thread on this: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3153942

TCA

For platform charges see below:

http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

For any suggestions, you'd need to post a lot more detail about your personal circumstances - i.e. investment goals and timeframe, what other investments you have, any pensions etc...

Might be best to decide what you want to buy first, then choose the platform.

Eco_Miser

Get Snowman's spreadsheet from here and have a play to fit your circumstances.

delmar39

Fidelity has the lowest charge index trackers, cheapest is the UK tracker. A straightforward but obviously not risk free way of getting yourself a stocks and shares ISA.


https://www.fidelity.co.uk/investor/tracker-funds/our-range.page

bowlhead99

delmar39 wrote: »

Fidelity has the lowest charge index trackers, cheapest is the UK tracker. A straightforward but obviously not risk free way of getting yourself a stocks and shares ISA.


https://www.fidelity.co.uk/investor/tracker-funds/our-range.page

The small print of course is that you pay fees out of the fund assets to the person running the fund, and you also pay fees to the person providing the investment platform or broker account through which you access the fund (the organisation who maintains your personal account, provides customer service and statements etc).

So Fidelity have a UK tracker at 0.07% basic fee, while Vanguard's is twice the price (in reality, it's less than a tenth of a percent more expensive so not much actual cash, and each of the funds will track the indexes with a margin of error anyway). Meanwhile if you have under £200k on Fidelity's platform, you have to pay them "just" 0.35% for platform administration. You might find the other funds available on other platforms much more cheaply than that, depending on how much money you're investing.

Snowman's spreadsheet makes it easy to consider the platform costs at different places because some are fixed fees in £ and some are in percentages.

"I am looking for a medium risk investment" doesn't help you pick a platform at all, because all platforms offer medium risk funds and they do not charge more or less dependent on risk. As TCA says, if you are going to be a money saving expert, try to narrow down what fund or combination of funds you want first, to meet your investing needs, and then you can go and see what platforms might be cheapest to do that. With one year's ISA allowance being invested there is not a huge gulf between cheapest and most expensive.

As delmar mentioned you can get cheap and easy exposure to stockmarkets by buying a simple tracker. But even though a 'UK index tracker' is a cheap type of fund to have, simply holding that one tracker is not a medium risk investment it is a very high risk investment that could lose 40% in a year. So, once you start looking at what type of investment you really want, to meet your needs, you are looking at buying a combination of funds held together to balance out the risks, or a more complicated fund with higher fees.

There are lots of threads where people comment on different combinations of funds being used in a portfolio. And there are lots of threads where people comment on what investment platforms are reliable, easy to use, good/bad customer service etc. So I suppose if you are trying to work out both - what to invest in and what platform to put it with - you would be best scrolling back through the last couple of months of threads or using the search function to see what people are saying (nothing has really changed in the market in the last 2-3 months).

delmar39

bowlhead99 wrote: »

As delmar mentioned you can get cheap and easy exposure to stockmarkets by buying a simple tracker. But even though a 'UK index tracker' is a cheap type of fund to have, simply holding that one tracker is not a medium risk investment it is a very high risk investment that could lose 40% in a year. So, once you start looking at what type of investment you really want, to meet your needs, you are looking at buying a combination of funds held together to balance out the risks, or a more complicated fund with higher fees.

I first started using cheap index trackers a long time ago when Motley Fool were pushing them because I wanted a simple and cheap way to invest. I've never lost out even through the ups and downs. I've lost significant amounts at certain stages, but just leave it there until things recover, which they generally do (and I'm young enough to wait!). All investments carry risk i.e. you can lose money, just a case of how much. Index trackers as history shows recover in line with the index so actually and in my experience they have been low risk as I have never lost any money through these products. Perhaps the gains won't be so high in a tracker at the moment due to the FTSE being above 6500, but when's the best time to start?? I invested in trackers when the index was below 4000 so things are moving along nicely (as things stand!). Drip feeding money in is the way to go. Of course I'm speaking purely from my own experiences and as you rightly say the OP should look at what's best for them individually. I have ready cash in the bank so enjoy looking at what my money does in an index tracker. Perhaps a question to ask is can you afford to lose the money and/or are you in a position to wait until things recover, which can take some time. Get your rainyday fund in place first.