Alternative to VLS80?

racey

fwor wrote: »

Is this fund less commonly available on the main trading platforms than the Vanguard VLS series?

It's available on Charles Stanley platform.

fwor

Trouble with Interactive Investor is that I've never found an easy way (in fact I've never found ~any~ way) to find a fund by ISIN code.

Perhaps they do have it, but I just don't know how to find it!

Mat_P

fwor wrote: »

Trouble with Interactive Investor is that I've never found an easy way (in fact I've never found ~any~ way) to find a fund by ISIN code.

Perhaps they do have it, but I just don't know how to find it!

filter on L&G funds:
http://www.iii.co.uk/investing/factsheet/J84X/lg-multi-index-5-i-acc

fwor

Mat_P wrote: »

filter on L&G funds:
http://www.iii.co.uk/investing/factsheet/J84X/lg-multi-index-5-i-acc

Thanks for your help - I'll have to look more carefully at the filter option. The search facility finds a long list of L&G products, but that doesn't seem to be one of them!

hutman

bowlhead99 wrote: »

There could be a lot of tears.

Must admit I've been pulled in the manner to which you've likened only a couple of months ago. However, the opportunity cost of holding as cash when you could be making say 15% is also truly horrific.

bowlhead99

hutman wrote: »

Must admit I've been pulled in the manner to which you've likened only a couple of months ago. However, the opportunity cost of holding as cash when you could be making say 15% is also truly horrific.

The opportunity cost of something is the return you would reasonably expect to get from an alternative opportunity. You should not reasonably expect to get 15% from equities or bonds or gold or P2P loans or anything else. I mean, sure, you might get 15%, but you might lose 30%, so your expectation can't be 15%.

Maybe a more reasonable expectation would be "inflation plus 4-5%" or whatever historic measure, for an equities-heavy portfolio ; which might still be considered optimistic by some, depending on the state of the global economy and asset prices at the moment.

But basically as your expectation for a medium to high risk Vanguard or L&G mixed asset fund shouldn't be 15%, then the opportunity cost of holding cash instead is not a horrific 15%. It is the difference between what you can get on cash (a couple of percent, if you don't have large amounts) and what you should expect for the generalist mixed asset fund (6-9% long term?).

So, opportunity chart of maybe 5%. Maybe more. But that "cost" is a cost that plenty of people are willing to pay to avoid uncertainty (e.g. a 40-50% market drop and then a long drawn out recovery).

This is not to suggest we should all stay in cash. Investing is clearly the way to grow your wealth long term. But nobody should be jealous of those that made 15% while they themselves stayed in cash and got 1%. Because if the investors got -45% instead, the people in cash would probably not be jealous at all.

brendon

Linton wrote: »

I dont see the point of your original plan since all the VLS's will hold the same shares in the same ratios and (except for VLS100) the same bonds in the same ratios. Why not put it all in VLS80?

I don't think this is strictly true. In the most recent newsletter, "European Government Bonds" are a larger holding than "UK Index Linked Bonds" in VLS 20. VLS 80 lists "UK Index Linked Bonds" but does not list "European Government Bonds", which presumably means that VLS 80 does not have any exposure to this asset class. My understanding is that holdings are not held in fixed ratio, but guided by modern portfolio theory and/or portfolio construction, which would vary based on % equities holdings. The holdings two VLS funds next to each other are similar enough, however.

MPN

brendon wrote: »

I don't think this is strictly true. In the most recent newsletter, "European Government Bonds" are a larger holding than "UK Index Linked Bonds" in VLS 20. VLS 80 lists "UK Index Linked Bonds" but does not list "European Government Bonds", which presumably means that VLS 80 does not have any exposure to this asset class. My understanding is that holdings are not held in fixed ratio, but guided by modern portfolio theory and/or portfolio construction, which would vary based on % equities holdings. The holdings two VLS funds next to each other are similar enough, however.

The VLS funds are still pretty much balanced overall in their own catergory's ie. 20/40/60/80 etc.

bowlhead99

brendon wrote: »

I don't think this is strictly true. In the most recent newsletter, "European Government Bonds" are a larger holding than "UK Index Linked Bonds" in VLS 20. VLS 80 lists "UK Index Linked Bonds" but does not list "European Government Bonds", which presumably means that VLS 80 does not have any exposure to this asset class. My understanding is that holdings are not held in fixed ratio, but guided by modern portfolio theory and/or portfolio construction, which would vary based on % equities holdings. The holdings two VLS funds next to each other are similar enough, however.

You are right that the holdings of bonds will not be exactly the same fixed ratio mix across the 20,60,80 etc.

However - the nature of the 20% equity fund is that it's basically a fixed interest fund and so the factsheet gives you lots of granular detail about the bond sub-categories it holds.

Whereas the 80% equities fund is not, and it doesn't give you masses of detail about the bonds. But you can see its largest bond holding is the vanguard "global bond" index fund, and you can look separately at that fund and see that over half of what it holds is treasuries / gov't bonds, and 20% of what it holds is Europe ex-UK, and so it's very unlikely that it is not bothering to hold any "European Government Bonds".

You would just need to do some digging to understand what its bonds actually are, because it is not a bonds fund, it's primarily an equities fund and as such it is devoting its factsheet space to explaining what equities it has.

brendon

bowlhead99 wrote: »

You are right that the holdings of bonds will not be exactly the same fixed ratio mix across the 20,60,80 etc.

However - the nature of the 20% equity fund is that it's basically a fixed interest fund and so the factsheet gives you lots of granular detail about the bond sub-categories it holds.

Whereas the 80% equities fund is not, and it doesn't give you masses of detail about the bonds. But you can see its largest bond holding is the vanguard "global bond" index fund, and you can look separately at that fund and see that over half of what it holds is treasuries / gov't bonds, and 20% of what it holds is Europe ex-UK, and so it's very unlikely that it is not bothering to hold any "European Government Bonds".

You would just need to do some digging to understand what its bonds actually are, because it is not a bonds fund, it's primarily an equities fund and as such it is devoting its factsheet space to explaining what equities it has.

It's still odd to not be consistent in the granularity, however. Because, like I said, it mentions "UK Index Linked Bonds" in BOTH funds, even though this is a smaller holding than the European bonds in the VLS 20. Even if this was an issue with granularity, surely the Linked Bonds should be excluded from the factsheet if they were a smaller holding? Why have they decided to break out UK Index Linked Bonds, but not a larger asset class?