World ex-UK fund

coyrls

Dird wrote: »

But then how do you know the value of fundsmith going up isn't 100% share price rises and he's just keeping the dividends for himself instead of re-investing?

https://www.fundsmith.co.uk/docs/default-source/documents---reports-accounts/2015-short-form-report-for-the-twelve-months-ended-31st-december-2015.pdf?sfvrsn=4

The value you are asking for is "Retained distributions on accumulation shares".

coyrls

Dird wrote: »

But then how do you know the value of fundsmith going up isn't 100% share price rises and he's just keeping the dividends for himself instead of re-investing?

In your position I'd be more worried about the cost of holding your investment. If I read your link correctly you invested £150 in Fundsmith on Christmas Eve. You bought 65.19 units. In the 4 months since your purchase 0.35 units have been sold to cover charges, this is equivalent to 0.5% of your original investment. As an annual charge that is around 1.5%. Do you have other investments? I have to say that £150 is a very small amount of money to have in a fund.

bottleandahalf

I am also restructuring my PF and was wondering whether to keep my Japanese Smaller co's instead of going for UK smaller companies as it's my highest performing fund at 35%?
Here is my prospective new PF...
Vanguard 80% 50%
Lindsell UK 25%
L and G UK Prop Feed 10%
First State Asia 8%
M.Borough UK micro 7%

bowlhead99

bottleandahalf wrote: »

I am also restructuring my PF and was wondering whether to keep my Japanese Smaller co's instead of going for UK smaller companies as it's my highest performing fund at 35%?

Best performing is a historic thing, that you're looking back at. In the very specific economic and market conditions in the particular timeframe since you bought it, it happens to have gone up more than some other things. Pretty much every year (or every six months, or every quarter), a different market sector takes a turn to be the best performing. But what is going to be best performing *next* is what you're trying to consider. And that is something you can't possibly know.

So you can go with your gut instinct or a coin toss and pick one or the other, or you can do the sensible thing and have a bit of both. I assume you've already got large Japanese companies and large UK companies in your portfolio so you are only looking to decide whether to also have exposure to small companies in those countries. To me, there's no particular reason to avoid small companies in either of those countries. But if your overall portfolio is small and you are looking to simplify it and declutter it, you could just give up on the idea of having small cap exposure, or buy one global fund that focuses on the smaller end of the scale.

Certainly to keep Japan and avoid UK, when UK is the country you live in - just because Japan happened to produce the best result for you last year - is laughable. The Pound has devalued against a variety of other currencies in the last year and so investments in all those countries will be worth more pounds now than they would have otherwise been (despite Japan also devaluing its own currency by money printing and negative interest rates). Assuming we don't Brexit, the pound should strengthen, and those foreign funds will be worth fewer pounds at the same time that UK business confidence starts to return. Tide goes in, tide goes out. And all your money on Japan with none on UK would be the wrong thing to have done.

So, piling into Japanese funds instead of UK ones seems shortsighted. Of course, you might feel that everyone will vote to exit Europe and that the resulting uncertainly will hammer the pound and the UK stock markets, which of course it would. In such a situation it would be useful to have a lot of foreign investments rather than domestic ones.

But if you are not trying to gamble on a short term election result or you don't have any strong feelings on what it will be, you should probably invest for the long term, which implies "a bit of everything" and no real reason to favour small Jap companies, especially as the markets there have been quite volatile in recent weeks.

Dird

coyrls wrote: »

If I read your link correctly you invested £150 in Fundsmith on Christmas Eve. You bought 65.19 units. In the 4 months since your purchase 0.35 units have been sold to cover charges, this is equivalent to 0.5% of your original investment. As an annual charge that is around 1.5%. Do you have other investments? I have to say that £150 is a very small amount of money to have in a fund.

I invested £1200 in 13 funds around xmas, each ranging from £50 to £150 (1 of them at £50 is my nephew's). None of the other funds has any transactions besides the initial investment so I guess Cavendish/Fidelity is just using fundsmith to take the fee for the whole ISA.

coyrls wrote: »

The value you are asking for is "Retained distributions on accumulation shares".

But what does that mean & it's a generic document? As you said I initially bought 65.19 units. I'd expect a transaction in the fund to say "Re-investment: currently 68.25 units" or something.

coyrls

Dird wrote: »

But what does that mean & it's a generic document? As you said I initially bought 65.19 units. I'd expect a transaction in the fund to say "Re-investment: currently 68.25 units" or something.

You have accumulation units and so there is no dividend paid to be reinvested; it is reinvested automatically. What the document I linked to shows is that for 2015 for your I accumulation units, 2.56p of the unit price is accounted for by dividends reinvested. If you had income units, you would have been paid 2.42p per unit as a dividend. If you want to see the effect of reinvested dividends on the price of the accumulation units, you can plot a graph of the accumulation unit price over time vs. the price of the income units over time, for example using the tools at Trustnet or Morningstar.

bowlhead99

Just seen your edit where you list the proposed portfolio:

bottleandahalf wrote: »

Here is my prospective new PF...
Vanguard 80% 50%
Lindsell UK 25%
L and G UK Prop Feed 10%
First State Asia 8%
M.Borough UK micro 7%

I like the Lindsell funds. But not sure why you are using one alongside a VLS which already has a quarter in the UK. This means your overall allocation only contains 38% outside the UK (30% sitting in the 40% of your portfolio which is in international equity trackers via VLS, and 8% in an Asia-but-not-Japan specialist fund). That's a big bet on the UK.

The other obvious questions include:

You're increasing UK and Asia-ex Japan exposure by adding dedicated managed funds. What's so good about the companies listed in those regions compared to companies in Europe, Japan or US?

Why "micro" cap rather than normal "small" cap for the extra UK exposure that you feel you need at the smaller end of the scale?

Why use the "feeder" fund instead of the main fund to get your property exposure? Aren't you doing this investing via an ISA or SIPP, which doesn't need to pay tax, so could invest in the main fund direct and avoid the tax paid at feeder level? If you're not using an ISA for your portfolio as far as possible, why not?

To be honest it looks like you've just looked down the marketing list at somewhere like Hargreaves Lansdown and just picked the ones with a shiny yellow star in the corner that went up quite a lot in recent years. It doesn't look like a great balanced portfolio that you spent hours designing to a particular risk tolerance. Would be interesting to hear what your goals are for it.

coyrls

Dird wrote: »

I invested £1200 in 13 funds around xmas, each ranging from £50 to £150 (1 of them at £50 is my nephew's). None of the other funds has any transactions besides the initial investment so I guess Cavendish/Fidelity is just using fundsmith to take the fee for the whole ISA.

I guess they are taking the charges from your largest holding, if £150 is the largest. Spreading £1,200 over 13 funds is unusual.

Dird

coyrls wrote: »

Spreading £1,200 over 13 funds is unusual.

I'm an unusual kind of guy :P basically took some of the top performers from the last 5 years & mixed with some more mainstream but lower performing funds. The balance is probably less than ideal, as is £15/quarter return http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=102295
perhaps I'll look to change it after I've read beyond page 22 of smarter investing

The mapping sounds like a lot of effort, guess I'll just hope none of them are robbing my dividends :f

bottleandahalf

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Just seen your edit where you list the proposed portfolio:

I like the Lindsell funds. But not sure why you are using one alongside a VLS which already has a quarter in the UK. This means your overall allocation only contains 38% outside the UK (30% sitting in the 40% of your portfolio which is in international equity trackers via VLS, and 8% in an Asia-but-not-Japan specialist fund). That's a big bet on the UK.

The other obvious questions include:

You're increasing UK and Asia-ex Japan exposure by adding dedicated managed funds. What's so good about the companies listed in those regions compared to companies in Europe, Japan or US?

Why "micro" cap rather than normal "small" cap for the extra UK exposure that you feel you need at the smaller end of the scale?

Why use the "feeder" fund instead of the main fund to get your property exposure? Aren't you doing this investing via an ISA or SIPP, which doesn't need to pay tax, so could invest in the main fund direct and avoid the tax paid at feeder level? If you're not using an ISA for your portfolio as far as possible, why not?

To be honest it looks like you've just looked down the marketing list at somewhere like Hargreaves Lansdown and just picked the ones with a shiny yellow star in the corner that went up quite a lot in recent years. It doesn't look like a great balanced portfolio that you spent hours designing to a particular risk tolerance. Would be interesting to hear what your goals are for it.

Hi
Thanks for your feedback. I am just starting to readjust my SIPP PF and want to keep a core holding - VLS with 3/4 others to simplify it.
I am thinking the Lind/ Train fund as it's top holdings are global companies eg Diageo, Unilever etc. These companies don't seem to be included in VLS top holdings.

I have held FS Asia as my EM for a while now and it has done well, so wasn't thinking of changing that one.

I am not using that L and G property feeder now as it has quite a large spread of 5.7%. Thinking of Henderson UK or maybe the BR prop tracker or new L and G one which is similar.(0.2% OCF)

As I say, I am at early stages of what to include but will definitely be having VLS as my core and 10% property and around 12-15% bonds.

I am 38 and will be investing in it for at least 20 years, so any suggestions/ input would be greatly appreciated.