What a Loss

EdGasket

Perhaps it was a custom selection of shares?

atush

magpiecottage wrote: »

It is possible that the portfolio was unsuitable for the OP, particularly given the timescale, so he could complain about this. However, the simple fact that it lost money would not be valid grounds for complaint.

A medium to low risk strategy over the past 4/5 years should have shown an increase, not a drop of that magnetude.

So I agree witht he above, they were not investing per your risk profile so I would have filed a complaint. So do so now.

as for future investing, i'd look at good Investment trusts paying income at around 3-4% that have raised dividends yearly over decades.

FatherAbraham

fugglestick wrote: »

And so back to the draining of the swamp, are there any suggestions to areas where I can invest for modest returns, other than gold and metals investment.

The irony is, whilst I was paying them fees, the Sovereigns I bought years go myself have made a far better return than the above!!! So I am tempted to re invest in gold.

Ugh.

Physical gold should only be used for insurance, not investment.

It's a real option. Use securities to invest in commodities.

More paragraphing would also be welcome.

Warmest regards,
FA

lvader

FatherAbraham wrote: »

Ugh.

Physical gold should only be used for insurance, not investment.

It's a real option. Use securities to invest in commodities.

More paragraphing would also be welcome.

Warmest regards,
FA

Given the volatility of gold I have to disagree, the idea the gold stays constant in value (everything else changes) is complete nonsense. Like any investment the value of Gold can go up and down and prone to both bull and bear markets.

lvader

I'm very interested in what the SIPP was invested in! It would make sense if it was invested predominantly in commodity funds/shares

jamesd

bigfreddiel wrote: »

they were following your instructions, so it's clearly you at fault. No need to try and do them for incompetence then.

One thing that seems clear is that they were not following the instructions that were given. Those specified a risk level that is inconsistent with the description we have so far of the investments that were actually made by them.

Triumph13

fugglestick, can I just check that you haven't been taking an income from this SIPP over the period in question?

Linton

It seems very odd to me that a professional managed portfolio service would create a portfolio of "a whole raft of companies, dozens in fact which I cannot list here" with a total portfolio size of £68K which would seem to imply £2K/holding or less. Totally bizarre in fact. Surely a small number of carefully chosen funds with documented justification would suffice and be far less work for Brooks Macdonald. Something very strange is going on.

Please OP give us the list. It cant be too difficult to cut and paste into a posting. Just the top 10 and total number would do.

dunstonh

I think it is clear that we all want to know which BM portfolio the OP was investing in.

Remember that most of what they do are defined portfolios and not custom. They publish their stats on their website.

Linton

Another question for the OP - how did you come to use James Hay/Brooks Macdonald? I dont think they are the first names that would come to mind should you want help managing a small (in the overall scheme of things) SIPP.