180K Investment

BananaRepublic

MonroeM wrote: »

I do feel there was no need for some of your comments such as 'you were only a small owner managed company' and 'if you truly are pretty wealthy'. I don't mind critcism at all and even welcome it but I think comments such as this are a bit personal, quite hurtful and completely unnecessary!

I assure you some people here can be far more hurtful if they try.

However, whilst the comments may have been rude - I'll leave you to decide that one - there is on this forum a history of people pretending to have a large wodge to invest, and bragging about their wealth. I see no reason to place you in that category, so perhaps some comments were, let us say, ungracious. But you might now understand the rational of some posters.

bowlhead99

MonroeM wrote: »

I must admit to being a bit taken aback by the manner and level of criticism but its fair enough if you feel I deserve it.

Criticism that isn't designed to be thought provoking and is just one person being nasty about the other, is a bad thing. Being nasty is not what I'm about, which is why in introducing the comments I apologised in advance for if they came off as overly critical.

Exploring options and examining choices is the point of a discussion group, and you were just investigating your options, so anything is fair game for comment and debate. It does sound like you have made your decisions with logic to them, when you explain your logic.

If the main priority is to get money invested outside the UK rather than inside it, make a clean slate, and only then go on and use the reallocation of the global funds to do the shift into the other asset classes later, then fair enough. But if you wanted global equities plus property plus bonds, and you were starting with global equity plus UK equity, it might have made more sense to change out some of the UK stuff for the non equities stuff, rather than buy more pure equities stuff which you already have a lot of. Still, if the method works for you, it's fine.

I do feel there was no need for some of your comments such as 'you were only a small owner managed company'

Well sorry but in the context of your pension and its suitability, it's a valid point.

If you were an executive of a 50,000 person organisation they can afford to retain pension consultants, benefit advisors etc and hammer the pension providers for great deals, economies of scale etc and the staff can end up with a good choice of funds and low costs.

Whereas, if you were 'only' a small owner managed (husband and wife director) business you may not have had access to a top quality set of good value choices. This is borne out by your idea to get a SIPP so you can presumably get better quality investments and /or lower costs.

So, when you later say you will see how the isa goes before doing something about perhaps getting a SIPP, it was worth highlighting that had previously said you felt you should change your arrangements (implying what you have isn't very good), and if the backstory is that it was a pension set up by your personal business rather than negotiated by a top advisor on behalf of millions of pounds of employee contributions, then it might be a poor portfolio.

As such it is not the sort of thing you should put off reviewing, especially as the value is 50% more than the ISA- thus the suggestion of using an IFA while you wait, rather than put it of a while

and 'if you truly are pretty wealthy'

'Truly'as a figure of speech. As in, "If you're really wealthy then maybe consider x, y, z."

I'mot saying "I disbelieve your claims, you liar"

. I don't mind critcism at all and even welcome it but I think comments such as this are a bit personal, quite hurtful and completely unnecessary!

Discussions that are text based can be hard to convey tone. That's why advisers and consultants meet clients face to face.

MonroeM

jdw2000 wrote: »

Interesting you came to the same conclusion as me, particularly when you didn't appear to be discussing VWRL earlier in the thread.

VWRL seems to tick the boxes for the inexperienced investor: passive and diversified.

VLS80 also appealed to me though and I couldn't decide. So I put 50% of my investment money into each.

In my case I chose the VWRL because it covered the world markets and only had about 7 per cent in the UK. I also looked at the HSBC world ETF's which is very low cost at 0.15 but it only covers the developed world.

atush

MonroeM wrote: »

Thank you to everybody who has taken the time so far to give their opinions.

I am keen to hear any other opinions for my future research and would especially like to hear back from the posters who asked me questions and to which I have responded?

Thank you all again your opinions are greatly appreciated.

Get yourself over to Monevator and start reading up. Lots of information there, and some articles on building a portfolio. Motley fool can be good as well.

If you do go for a sipp, use global trackers and mixed asset funds like Vanguard until you can learn the ropes and choose funds and build a portfolio. But I would also suggest visiting an IFA in the first instance. Meet a few and see how it pans out. Do you HAVE to leave the company pension? Can't you leave it there for now?

Come back here with quotes for the work to make sure you arent paying over the Odds.

atush

I feel the hostility to Bowlhead was very much overedone.

On the internet, where you cant hear non verbal clues and inflections- you really need to regard the actual grammar.

He wasnt insulting you, and I also felt when I read the post he was referring to, that you sold a mixed asset fund and replaced it with a 100% equity fund. Which I feel was a mistake. In the overall balance of your portfolio- you sold funds and bought funds without referring to the websites and reading up on portfolio building. And asset allocation.

Not that this is a huge problem- we all do this when learning. Ie making mistakes.

So hold off buying and selling (or at least buying) til you've read up, and dont take personally any constructive criticism (as I felt bowlhead was being constructive in the main)

jdw2000

MonroeM wrote: »

In my case I chose the VWRL because it covered the world markets and only had about 7 per cent in the UK. I also looked at the HSBC world ETF's which is very low cost at 0.15 but it only covers the developed world.

Those were all among my reasons too. But as I am making clear: I know very little about all this and I have only just started to try to learn. You almost certainly know more than I do.

MonroeM

atush wrote: »

I feel the hostility to Bowlhead was very much overedone.

On the internet, where you cant hear non verbal clues and inflections- you really need to regard the actual grammar.

He wasnt insulting you, and I also felt when I read the post he was referring to, that you sold a mixed asset fund and replaced it with a 100% equity fund. Which I feel was a mistake. In the overall balance of your portfolio- you sold funds and bought funds without referring to the websites and reading up on portfolio building. And asset allocation.y



Not that this is a huge problem- we all do this when learning. Ie making mistakes.

So hold off buying and selling (or at least buying) til you've read up, and dont take personally any constructive criticism (as I felt bowlhead was being constructive in the main)

With respect there was absolutely no hostility to bowl head quite the reverse I think? However, let's move on from this and not waste time on trivial feelings.

So you feel I made a mistake by selling my Royal London multi-asset fund, well that is purely a matter of opinion and I have explained my reasons in a previous post. Did you read my post explaining my viewpoint on selling the Royal London fund? I totally agree with you that I will make mistakes but hopefully not too many!

I know that I am new to this forum and obviously I respect the opinions of experienced poster's but at the end of the day I have to make my own decisions.

darkidoe

Asset Allocation. Asset allocation.Asset Allocation.

One thing I learnt before dipping my toes into the market is to decide what assets need to diversify my portfolio (stocks, cash, bond)/geographical diversification in terms of market cap. After deciding my allocation, I can then figure out a strategy of owning the assets in a way I can minimise costs and rebalance to allocation and keep things simple. Then I figure out what products (UT/OICE) or ETFs are more suitable.

The way I went about it was building my own world index fund with various market index ETFs. That way I can chose the allocation to different geographical markets as I see fit. You may want to keep UK to 7%, others might want a home bias or believe that blinding market cap weighted indexes might overweight in certain sectors.

Decide on the allocation and strategy early on and stick to it to minimise chances of you becoming a trader and chopping and changing the grand plan.

if you are keen, you can track your own returns and compare to the various indexes and see how your portfolio is doing against the average.

It's a process and we are all learning! Have fun and good luck in building your portfolio.

jdw2000

darkidoe wrote: »

Asset Allocation. Asset allocation.Asset Allocation.

One thing I learnt before dipping my toes into the market is to decide what assets need to diversify my portfolio (stocks, cash, bond)/geographical diversification in terms of market cap. After deciding my allocation, I can then figure out a strategy of owning the assets in a way I can minimise costs and rebalance to allocation and keep things simple. Then I figure out what products (UT/OICE) or ETFs are more suitable.

The way I went about it was building my own world index fund with various market index ETFs. That way I can chose the allocation to different geographical markets as I see fit. You may want to keep UK to 7%, others might want a home bias or believe that blinding market cap weighted indexes might overweight in certain sectors.

Decide on the allocation and strategy early on and stick to it to minimise chances of you becoming a trader and chopping and changing the grand plan.

if you are keen, you can track your own returns and compare to the various indexes and see how your portfolio is doing against the average.

It's a process and we are all learning! Have fun and good luck in building your portfolio.

So, in short, you think that you can beat the markets with your knowledge and wits. Perhaps you can. And perhaps the enjoyment you get from actively managing your portfolio is in itself worth something to you as a hobby.

But experts say that you are unlikely to be able to. And if you do, it's more by fluke than design. There is even an investor I read on this forum who said that he would likely have done better had he took the opposite of all the decisions he had taken!

It is far less time and hassle to simply choose a world wide fund with a proportionally-correct representation of the various stock markets and to just leave it to do it's thing over the long term.


But, as I said above, this doesn't factor in the hobby aspect. If you derive pleasure from actively managing your investments and this in itself is worth something to you then that's a reason to do it.

atush

MonroeM wrote: »

With respect there was absolutely no hostility to bowl head quite the reverse I think? However, let's move on from this and not waste time on trivial feelings.

So you feel I made a mistake by selling my Royal London multi-asset fund, well that is purely a matter of opinion and I have explained my reasons in a previous post. Did you read my post explaining my viewpoint on selling the Royal London fund? I totally agree with you that I will make mistakes but hopefully not too many!

I know that I am new to this forum and obviously I respect the opinions of experienced poster's but at the end of the day I have to make my own decisions.

Yes I read it. And my opinion stands.

Make your own decisions by all means. But expect to be given criticism now and again over a choice made (if you ask for opinions as you have).