SIPP Portfolio guidance??

darkidoe

Try reading http://monevator.com/how-to-estimate-your-risk-tolerance/ and the Monevator series on how to read fund factsheets.

Obviously funds and trusts are slightly different products. With my rudimentary understanding (correct me if I am wrong), trusts are run more like a company, where you buy shares of this company which then uses the money to invest. So you own the share of this company rather than owning the individual shares of the other equity they choose to invest in. So the company will have limited shares to trade on the market, so the trading of shares wil be limited to the limited number of shares available. A fund is more open-ended where they can always create new units to sell to investors or buy back from investors. They will each have different ongoing management charges as well i presume so it would be wise to look that up. Also a simple look at the holdings, tells me they have different weighting to different sectors. WPCT is 63% Healthcare, 17% Financial, etc whilst Woodford Fund is 35% Healthcare, 22% Financial. 18% Consumer Goods, etc. This will affect its performance if one sector is doing poorly or better than another. Even the top healthcare companies they hold are different. So they are actually very different products, although both has the grand name of 'Woodford' on it.

I am not an expert at this either but it's worthwhile reading a little around the subject and peel off the labels and see what's really underneath all this jargon and complicated products and see if its worth the cost they are charging.

bigfreddiel

darkidoe has the right idea, go to monevator and read up the passive investing topics, build a low cost portfolio for your risk profile and that's it.
Or just use a vanguard Lifestrategy fund with an equity proportion suiting your risk. Lifestrategy 80 is an 80% equity 20% bonds mix, and so on down to Lifestrategy 20 and so on.

Cheers fj

Sobryma

There are a few books worthy of reading to give you a background, too many to mention if you search on forums you will get a good list. Most argue for passive / index approach and are US biased but give you a guideline. One I am currently reading is a A Wealth of Common Sense by Ben Carlson which is well balanced and gives a broad coverage of the issues.