Simple Stocks and Shares ISA Options Advice

bowlhead99

Corbula wrote: »

One question I have, on this website it say about Charles Stanley that the minimum deposit is £50 regular monthly direct debit or £500. Does that mean I can either put a minimum of £500 or a £50 a month Direct Debit until there is £500 there?
So if I put a couple of thousand in at the start that would cover it? I don't have to keep putting £50 a month after that?

Yes, there's no ongoing obligation to keep putting in 50 a month if you already have a decent amount.

Basically they let you add fund holdings or sell fund holdings, dealing with that activity 'for free' (covered by the annual charge of 0.25% in arrears). However, it would be a monstrous pain in the arz for both them and the fund managers if you decided you wanted to stick just, say, £50 in 2000 different funds with your £100k balance and then receive reports on all those positions and make them process the tiny dividends or corporate actions etc.

So they say if you want to go on a monthly plan for £50 a month, fine, we'll subscribe you into that fund, but if you are only going to buy an amount as a one off purchase and leave it for a few years, we'll impose a £500 minimum, because neither we nor the fund manager are interested in an investor who wants to just put £50in and leave it.

Of course in practice once you have done £50 a month for a few months you can give up and invest in something else and just keep what your have, because once they have got you on the register as an investor they are not going to force you out. Or if you only wanted a small holding you could buy the £500 minimum and then later sell £400 and they probably wouldn't bother moaning to you about your small £100 residual balance, as they have better things to spend their time on.

On the Charles Stanley Direct website it says that it's free to trade funds but it's £11.50 to trade stocks & shares. So I'm a right in saying that the Vanguard Lifestrategy 80 is a fund and I could change to one of the others at Vanguard or else where whenever for free? The £11.50 is only if I'm trading individual stocks and shares in specific companies? Much like an active trader? Which I won't be doing.
https://www.charles-stanley-direct.co.uk/Our_Charges/

Correct, no charge for funds transactions (open ended investment companies (oeics) like Lifestrategy, or unit trusts) - which just involves them leaving an order to subscribe or redeem £x worth of units at the next available daily price set by the fund manager. That is all covered by the annual 0.25% you give them as a 'platform fee'.

The 'per transaction' charges are just on things where they have to go to the stock exchange and trade something with other dealers and get you a good price. The latter would cover 'exchange traded' funds (ETFs) or investment trusts with live real-time prices, or stocks and shares, government and corporate bonds in individual companies etc. For 'funds' you are fine just to sit back and pay the ongoing 0.25% and they will do the subscribing and redeeming in and out of these open-ended funds as part of the service.