Boast / weep about your recent investment decisions HERE

grey_gym_sock

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

next week, in my shares ISA, cash from dividends within the ISA will be used to top up SGRO (segro). this is where most of the dividends in the ISA have been going for the last 2 years (except when i topped up SSE instead). i wanted another property holding, but thought i'd steer clear of buying another company with a lot of central london property. the holding is now about up to size, so next month i may start buying something new inside the ISA.

it is now next month (the future! today!), and i'm going to start buying MYI (murray international) with the dividends inside this ISA. could keep doing buying it for a few years.

why?

i wasn't very inspired by a few possible individual shares that i looked at, but the main reason is that i still have too much in UK equities compared to ex-UK equities, so using the dividends from some UK equities to buy something mainly ex-UK will gradually redress the balance.

but why MYI, an actively managed investment trust, instead of a tracker, which i usually advocate?

mainly, gearing. MYI has c. 16% gearing, with a borrowing cost of c. 2.5% ... so, supposing it can get a total return on its investments of only 5% or 6%, then its use of gearing (if it keeps using it - there's always the risk that the manager will decrease/increase gearing at exactly the wrong time), that will boost returns by c. 0.5% ... which is about enough to pay for the higher costs of active management in this case, since MYI has on-going charges of 0.75%, and passive alternatives for global value (or high-yield) equities (which is what MYI is in) would cost c. 0.25% (some possible passive alternatives would be: VVAL, XDEV, VHYL, IWFV).

MYI has done poorly over the last few years, partly due to low US exposure and high EM exposure. so perhaps its time will come again - but from my point of view, hopefully not too soon, because i'd like to keep buying it at low prices for a few years. its price is now close to NAV (or c. 1% above); i'd stop buying if it went too far above NAV.

i already have tracker holdings covering the developed world ex-UK, but instead of just adding to them, i'd rather add something with a value tilt (and with a bit of EM - especially since MYI doesn't have any/much in the bits of EM that i find more scary e.g. china). (i also have a bit in BTEM (british empire trust), which is supposed to be a different approach to global value.)

(no boasting/weeping, as the result isn't known yet )

talexuser

I bought into MYI for the grandkids in Dec 13 and topped up a few times since then on an 18 year timescale (unless ongoing poor performance switches out). Top ups have obviously been cheaper, price is still 12% down on the initial buy, but overall investment is now 5% up with dividends and another due on the 18th. So a tiny boast with some weep as the price fell!

racing_blue

Living life on the egde, I just topped up my UK FTSE100 tracker, VUKE.

Pass a towel

guitarman001

I lost £20k on penny stocks about 4 years ago.
Lost maybe a grand on spread-betting.
Up £2.5k now on oil stocks and Lifestrategy.
Overall down massively.

Thrugelmir

Overall my portfolio is going in no particular direction at the moment. Letting dividends accumulate while I decide what to do next. No stocks that I've any urgency to sell. Nothing much is grabbing my attention as an outright buy either. Anybody else feel similar?

atush

guitarman001 wrote: »

I lost £20k on penny stocks about 4 years ago.
Lost maybe a grand on spread-betting.
Up £2.5k now on oil stocks and Lifestrategy.
Overall down massively.

At least you have gone from Gambling to investing. Thats something?

kidmugsy

A few weeks ago we bought a Gold ETF, as insurance against Mr Cameron exploding and covering us all with slime. The gold will help pay for the clean up.

westy23

Trying to keep it simple.
Got some global exposure using Rcp and Smt.
And buy in equal amounts every time there is a largish dip in the market some Fundsmith and Woodford equity inc units.
My one and only boast is earlier this year I had a matured Ocado
Saye plan which cost me £4800, option price was 91.4p and paid out
Just over £32000.
Spent the lot treating the kids and a nice cruise for me and the missus.
And just had a complete new central heating system fitted.

TheTracker

Busy month for me, first trades in a year. 40k pension and 15k ISA input to rebalance against unchanged equity asset allocation, other than further dilution of home bias. 6 figure sum released from safe low interest private equity (sale of company) and thrown in bonds, reduced p2p holding to balance.

First fund change for at least a couple of years - Asset allocation has 10% value tilt, sold all Vanguard UK Equity Income and High Yield Div VHYL as poor proxies. Bought vanguard global value factor etf. Still imperfect, but closer to allocation intent, although my only non pure passive holding.

Brexit schmexit.

Will report in the inevitable Xmas returns thread how it turned out.

guitarman001

atush wrote: »

At least you have gone from Gambling to investing. Thats something?

Yes, much better now!