Where do you get investment ideas from ?

crystal_pixie_2

Daniel_Elkington wrote: »

Dear Sirs,

Balanced simply means balanced between income and growth, you can have extremely volatile income stocks and extremely volatile growth stocks with a high correlation, ending up with an extremely volatile income fund.

I'd trust an IFA if it is a decent amount of money, although I would say that, being one.

Ryan is wrong - woodford is not a no brainer. It is a concentrated equity income fund, it works well as a satellite play in an income portfolio, but doesn't help to construct a portfolio as, due to the low history, one cannot calculate correlation and how that impacts overall portfolio volatility.

http://www.thewma.co.uk/private-investor-indices/

I like these, as an asset allocation, I use them with my clients!

To be quite honest, I'd go and talk to an IFA (who uses analytics). Most of them, well we do, offer the first appointment pro-bono so you can see if you think they've got enough knowledge to trust them.

I know MSE is the place for DIY types and my comments will likely attact scorn, but if you are unsure as to what you're doing and DIY isn't working then maybe call in the professionals?

Hope this helps,

Dan.

Hmmmmm - I won't pour scorn (apart from the dear Sirs - us ladies do invest too your know!)

HOWEVER - I will say that I did try the IFA route without much success. I had a £25k pot to start with and most IFAs wouldn't even consider giving me advice until with was double that amount.

So for a 40% tax payer with a potential for putting about £1k a month into my pot I thought that was a bit of a raw deal. However, I have found that you can set things up yourself quite well.

BTW I like the Woodford income fund - its one of my core funds I drip feed into.

Linton

Daniel_Elkington wrote: »

Dear Sirs,

Balanced simply means balanced between income and growth, you can have extremely volatile income stocks and extremely volatile growth stocks with a high correlation, ending up with an extremely volatile income fund.

.....

In theory you can but as far as I can see it doesnt seem the market is yet ready for such a product. 50% EM small companies 50% junk bonds - mmm sounds interesting.

enthusiasticsaver

I am just starting out on investing so do not claim to be an expert but am avoiding individual shares and going for multi asset funds or funds of funds which match my risk profile. I look for diversification, steady growth over the last 5 to 10 years, a reasonable dividend yield and low charges. I am also reading everything on this forum to do with investments and monevator and trustnet articles.
At the moment I am just investing in the Vanguard LS funds but will be choosing up to 4 or 5 more balanced multi asset funds/trackers and also considering the Woodford Income fund as that seems to be very popular at the moment when I invest a lump sum later on in the year. I am researching reasonably cheap active funds at the moment so as to have a mix of passive and active funds.
I am not after big impressive gains though as am looking long term. Determined also not to be panicked into selling if the price drops but will buy then instead.

gadgetmind

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

At the moment I am just investing in the Vanguard LS funds but will be choosing up to 4 or 5 more balanced multi asset funds/trackers

You need to ask yourself what you're adding to the portfolio with this extra complexity.

Will you be increasing return, and if so, how? What proof do you have that adding this fund/asset/sector/territory will achieve this?

Will you be reducing volatility, and again how?

Never add anything unless you know what it's going to add to the portfolio.

gadgetmind

Linton wrote: »

50% EM small companies 50% junk bonds - mmm sounds interesting.

All Hargreaves Lansdown would have to do is brand it the "Woodnut Tiger Equity High Yield Bond Smart Delta" fund and tell people they only have a few days to get in at launch and it'd fly!

AlanP_2

gadgetmind wrote: »

You need to ask yourself what you're adding to the portfolio with this extra complexity.

Will you be increasing return, and if so, how? What proof do you have that adding this fund/asset/sector/territory will achieve this?

Will you be reducing volatility, and again how?

Never add anything unless you know what it's going to add to the portfolio.

I'm looking at a similar approach with a VLS as the core and a small number of ancillary trackers, or maybe less ancillary ones and an additional multi-index fund (L&G Multi-Index & maybe).

As the VLS & the L&G have slightly different strategies and geographic allocations my thinking was that this would increase my diversification.

Should I be looking deeper than that?