Your favourite tracker

Mrs_Z

Good evening to all,
I'm thinking of including a tracker fund to my S&S ISA for next year and have started just looking into different types available.

Not yet sure whether I should be looking for FTSEAll share, FTSE100 or maybe a Global tracker of trackers of some sort. I have plenty of time before April but in the meantime - i'd be interested to know which trackers forum members have included in their portfolios and were happy with (all the way to the bank :rotfl:).

The investment timeframe would be 10yrs +.

masonic

What other investments do you have? You should probably be aiming for a globally diversified portfolio overall, so that ought to inform your choice.

Linton

What does the rest of your portfolio look like? It is impossible to suggest anything if dont know what is missing.

BLB53

Personally I like the mix of globally diversified equities and bonds provided by Vanguard LifeStrategy 60 - for me, the ultimate low cost buy-and-forget index fund.

Here's a recent article on Monevator
http://monevator.com/using-vanguard-lifestrategy-funds-life/

Sam_J12

Hi Mrs Z,

I think you might be going about things the wrong way around. You should decide which sectors and markets you wish to invest in first, and then decide what the best way to invest would be i,e, buy shares directly, invest in an actively managed fund or invest in a tracker fund.

if you do decide to invest in a tracker fund in a particular market, then the first decision would be whether you want an exchange traded fund or a mutual fund (read up on them - they are similar but with a few differences). Then, look at the documentation of the fund to see what the "tracking error" is - this is the difference between how the fund performs and how the market it tracks performs. There will always be a difference due to the cost of running the fund, but some funds have a considerably higher tracking error than others. This is a more useful figure for working out the best tracking fund than the "total expense ratio" (TER) or the "ongoing charges figure" (OCF) which are commonly looked at. For an illustration of the importance of tracking error on long term performance take a look at this Telegraph article that looks at the performance of various UK trackers - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/10580063/The-500000-fund-investors-failed-by-trackers.html

Good luck in making your decision!

trotter09

OP, to answer the question you actually asked, which was what trackers do members actually have...

Legal & General UK Index, which is a UK All Share tracker. I hold it via Hargreaves Lansdown. The charges are 0.06% + 0.45% platform fee, so about 0.5% total charge. I like Hargreaves because their website and service are first class. You can find cheaper platforms I daresay.

It's by no means the only investment I have, but it's sort of the boring bedrock into which I make a monthly DD. For excitement (usually the excitement of losing money...) it's gold shares, Brazil or Indian investment trusts (though that's been a good one).

jimjames

So trackers I have:

Vanguard UK
Vanguard US
HSBC 250
Fidelity Far East
Fidelity Emerging
HSBC Japan
Fidelity UK

I'll standardise on Vanguard UK when my ISAs get merged.

andrewmax

I rely on Vanguard US for this purpose

ChesterDog

I have Vanguard All World, several Vanguard Trackers in a LifeStrategy (actually, that one is my wife's) and an iShares UK (Commercial) Property tracker.

Playing_with_Fire_2

I like cheap global trackers for the long term, Vanguard LifeStrategy for the shorter term (lower %s for shorter investments).

This link sums up some of the reasons that I like a global tracker
http://monevator.com/why-a-total-world-equity-index-tracker-is-the-only-index-fund-you-need/

For me, the FTSE 100 has too much banking and energy to be my main fund.

tigerspill

BLB53 wrote: »

Personally I like the mix of globally diversified equities and bonds provided by Vanguard LifeStrategy 60 - for me, the ultimate low cost buy-and-forget index fund.

Here's a recent article on Monevator
http://monevator.com/using-vanguard-lifestrategy-funds-life/

Me too. But I went for the VLS 40.