Scottish Friendly My UK Tracker Options (ISA)

mal48

Ok masonic. UK growth funds are almost certainly undervalued at the moment. You could do worse than to invest in them. I certainly am, M

mal48

To bow.I think you need to get a life. I couldn't be bothered reading all your nonsense. I'm getting brilliant returns and both L and G and SVM have excellent reputations. I beat the market consistently. That's the main point, M

mal48

bow. I think it's clear by now what the charges are and that they're all inclusive. As for SVM they're in the top 10 for consistency over the last 10 years.There might be some geeks on this site, but you're incredible. Suggest you invest with SF and make excellent returns as I do. Frankly, your command of English is so turgid and your financial acumen so bizarre, that I found it impossible to read much of your nonsense, M

masonic

mal48 wrote: »

Ok masonic. UK growth funds are almost certainly undervalued at the moment. You could do worse than to invest in them. I certainly am, M

I do invest in a UK growth fund. The total charges I pay (including platform fee) add up to 0.85% and the 10 year performance is currently 265%, which is considerably better than the one you are promoting.

mal48 wrote: »

To bow.I think you need to get a life. I couldn't be bothered reading all your nonsense. I'm getting brilliant returns and both L and G and SVM have excellent reputations. I beat the market consistently. That's the main point, M

You should read it. Bowlhead has gone to more effort than I was willing to do to show these SF products for what they are. No sane and rational person could read Bowlhead's analysis and still be under the illusion that these products are worth considering as an investment.

bxboards

mal48 wrote: »

To bow.I think you need to get a life. I couldn't be bothered reading all your nonsense.

An extremely rude response to someone who has put great time and effort into their post.

If you put as much time into considering your own investment choices are you do defending them here, you could be thousands of pounds better off. Your life, and your choice but a poor one.

It's clear you are being willfully stubborn and to tell someone who has spent a great deal of effort trying to help you save money and others from investing in these poor value funds to 'get a life' is disgraceful.

bowlhead99

mal48 wrote: »

bow. I think it's clear by now what the charges are and that they're all inclusive.

You probably think that because you mentioned that you didn't read my post, which included me providing links to their own documentation which explained that the total fee is greater than 1.5%. The 1.5% is the annual management charge, and there are other charges, costs and deductions leading to a higher Ongoing Charge Forecast.

They publish the estimated Ongoing Charge Forecast on their website for their products structured as OEICs (e.g. their UK Growth Fund in which the UK Active fund invests, for which the figure is greater than 1.50%).

As for SVM they're in the top 10 for consistency over the last 10 years.

I remember three years ago the board of directors of SVM Global Investment Trust kicked out SVM as managers and, supported by shareholders, appointed Henderson instead. SVM had been running the Trust since they founded it two decades earlier but had lost over 40% in five years. They are a small boutique, not superstar managers.

As shown by the earlier graphs, their performance in the UK All Companies sector has not been particularly consistent over the last decade or two ; closely tracking the FTSE all-share for a while and then latterly performing more closely to the FTSE 250 with similar or perhaps greater volatility. A bit Jekyll and Hyde.

They have done well in the last 5 years, if high risk high volatility is what you want, but again as shown by the graphs, the small UK Growth fund they manage for Scottish Friendly has not performed as well as the one they manage for themselves.

There might be some geeks on this site, but you're incredible.

I do seem to go to incredible lengths to feed the trolls, when others would just sit back and let them make a fool of themselves.

I am quite passionate about people not being ripped off, or being misled by idiots, which is why I spent an hour of my own time, for free, doing financial research in a beer garden.

Suggest you invest with SF and make excellent returns as I do.

Thanks for the advice. Suggest you invest with someone cheaper and make better returns.

Frankly, your command of English is so turgid and your financial acumen so bizarre, that I found it impossible to read much of your nonsense, M

I consider myself to have quite good financial acumen. I am wondering under what circumstances financial acumen could be described as 'bizarre'.

Wishing to evaluate potential financial performance of an investment proposal is not bizarre behaviour. Digging closely into fee clauses, terms and conditions and following web links to understand an investment opportunity presented to me, strikes me as 'normal' financial acumen and not 'financial acumen so bizarre'.

I must admit it is more natural for someone to have the reaction "walk away" when an investment ISA manager offers nine choices, all with high fees, and doesn't quantify the historic performance or volatility of any of them. Perhaps I should have done that. But instead I was intrigued by your contention that they had some good value offerings. So I looked at them. It turns out they didn't; it was just your naivety thinking the product was good because you happened to make money from it over a short timescale.

mal48

Tried ploughing through some of bow's nonsense. It's clear bow doesn't understand how a charging formula works. In the case of My Choice you're only paying 1.5% on the actual money invested. The figure shows as technically higher because it's also applied to the returns and then applied back to the original amount invested. All the information is in the Key Facts and the maximum charge is 1.5%. I also cross reference the Higher Fund prices against the results for the underlying L and G funds to satisfy myself they correspond.
I recommended the SVC site, not to check the charges because they're for their own funds, not the one they manage for SF. Again you're paying 1.5% only with My Choice. The reason I suggested looking at the site was for the investing methodology, which does also apply to the SF fund and was in response to unfounded accusations of closet tracking.
I said that SVM are in the top 10 for consistency over the past 10 years.That's a big claim, so I refer you to an article by Alex Paget on Trustnet Direct 14 Jan 2016-The most consistent funds of the last ten years.
As for the ramblings about the price of oil and so forth, yes you need to read the news. Diversification is the key, more so than low costs for trackers. My returns are better than UK index funds and the likes of Nutmeg, M

mal48

So bow, the self styled financial guru, does his research in a beer garden. Much is explained, M

mal48

Glad to hear you invest in growth funds, masonic. You're very wise and its refreshing to get back to an intelligent conversation after trying to deal with bow. There's a lot of value in them at the moment.
To be clear, I've never claimed SF is the best product on the market. I like a lot of their features and my returns are good, though I could make slightly .more elsewhere. Some people could no doubt make a lot more. I've even said I might move to Vanguard in the next financial year.
My only purpose has been to counter claims that My Choice is an extremely poor product, with extortionate charges and low to zero returns. I know not all of these are your arguments. It's a sound enough vehicle for a small investor, no more than that, Mal

bowlhead99

mal48 wrote: »

Tried ploughing through some of bow's nonsense.It's clear bow doesn't understand how a charging formula works. In the case of My Choice you're only paying 1.5% on the actual money invested.

For clarity, you don't mean the actual money you invested, you mean the value of the actual money invested (including gains and losses), on a daily basis.

All the information is in the Key Facts and the maximum charge is 1.5%.

The management charge is 1.5%. The Key Facts document states that the MyChoice UK Active Fund is currently linked to the Scottish Friendly Asset Managers UK Growth OEIC. They have not updated their published report for this OEIC since the year ended November 2014, but they published a KIID incorporating an ongoing charges forecast based on data for the year ended November 2015, estimating it at 1.55% (which I linked).

I recommended the SVC site, not to check the charges because they're for their own funds, not the one they manage for SF. Again you're paying 1.5% only with My Choice. The reason I suggested looking at the site was for the investing methodology, which does also apply to the SF fund and was in response to unfounded accusations of closet tracking

The reason I took you into the SVM site links within my post was to find an easy explanation - from a fund manager you had heard of and whose site you had visited - of how an overall ongoing charges forecast can exceed a simple management charge, because annual management charge is typically one component of overall charges and there may be other charges billed by other parties. These sort of charges account for the UK Growth OEIC's OCF exceeding its AMC.

But still, as Masonic had said earlier, a few basis points here and there either side of the 1.5% does not really matter; whether it is 1.7 or 1.6 or 1.5 or 1.4, it is still 'high'.

I said that SVM are in the top 10 for consistency over the past 10 years.That's a very big claim, so I refer you to an article by Alex Paget on Trustnet Direct 14 Jan 2016-The most consistent funds of the last ten years.

You seemed quite keen to point out that we shouldn't look into the charges on the SVM site because those are for SVM's own UK Growth Fund, and not for the Scottish Friendly UK Growth Fund which SVM manage with a similar remit. They are two different funds, right ?

So it would probably make sense for me to remind you that in the five-year performance chart sourced from Trustnet (the second of my three charts earlier) the Scottish Friendly version appeared to lag significantly behind the SVM version, which is why I didn't even bother to include it on the chart running back 16 years to 1/1/2000.

However, as you're saying your investment choice was good because 'SVM are in the top 10 for consistency over 10 years according to that article', it is worth pulling up the 10 year chart from Trustnet's website, and now including both the SVM fund which is in the top 10 for consistency over 10 years, and your Scottish Friendly version of the UK Growth fund with the same manager.

As you can see, they follow a similar path over the 10 years, due to sharing a manager and strategy, but the SVM own fund (low fee institutional version) has exceeded the performance of the Scottish Friendly version BY OVER SIXTY PERCENT.



It's pretty cheeky of you to say Scottish Friendly is great because they give you access to a manager whose fund is top 10 for consistent outperformance, when that is not the fund that they are actually offering you. The one they offered you is not top 10 for consistent outperformance. It is halfway between an HSBC All-Share tracker and an HSBC FTSE 250 tracker, both of which are available for <0.2% AMC plus a platform fee. Here's a picture of those funds sandwiching yours quite neatly:



So, it's disingenuous to ride on SVM's coat tails and say any investment with them is great because they are so consistent. The 'consistent' fund from the article out-performed yours by 60%+ over the last decade. It would be just as irresponsible for me to say SVM are a terrible outfit because they lost lots of money in their Global Investment Trust causing the investors and directors to defect to Henderson and rebrand. It doesn't mean that will happen to your fund, and FWIW I don't think they are a terrible outfit.

As for the ramblings about the price of oil and so forth,yes you need to read the news. Diversification is the key, more so than low costs for trackers. My returns are better than UK index funds and the likes of Nutmeg, M

The point about oil price and commodities price crash and banking industry problems was that the UK all-share index fund is a poor quality un-diversified set of holdings and was hit disproportionately by those things.

So, having returns better than that index was very easy if you were investing ex-UK (which you were in your 'higher' fund, which also had an FX boost from Brexit) or if you were investing away from the largecaps and defensive sectors (which you were in your Active/ UK Growth). Setting yourself a target of beating the UK FTSE100 or FTSE All-Share is not a high bar and not something to be proud that you paid 1.5% to accomplish.

Diversification is key, yes. So your two-fund strategy of getting your UK exposure mainly from UK consumer businesses rather than from utilities or defensives, and by having your 'higher' fund exposure be just US, Europe and UK trackers which omit Japan, developed Asia, emerging markets, corporate bonds, government bonds and real estate... doesn't sound like you really believe that diversification is key. It sounds like you are trying to create a justification for why you beat one specialist market by cleverly diversifying, while in reality your diversification is poor and you are paying high fees to achieve it.