Investment Advice

villieb

Hello!

I am after some advice on two subjects. If I need to split this into two separate threads then I will.

When it comes to investing I really don't know where to start.... there's a wealth of information and i can't make sense of it... platform fees etc...

1) I am looking at investing into a fund, possibly the VLS, drip feeding about £200 a month into this fund, via a stocks and shares ISA platform. I don't know where to turn... Go directly to Vanguard / HL / other providers?

2) My mum has thousands of tesco shares from share incentive schemes and through dividends over the last few decades and i've been thinking of moving these into a stocks and shares ISA. I know that I have to sell the shares and re-buy them within a stocks and shares ISA. Can I re-invest dividends in a S&S isa? again - which platform would I head towards and how can I compare them all.

Apologies in advance if I haven't provided enough information....

Thanks for reading...

LHW99

Firstly you won't get advice as such here, its not allowed, but there are some very clever and well qualified people (not me!) who will give you there thoughts and comments.
And you will also get thoughts and comments from the rest of us!

So for your questions:
1) Is this going to be a pension (ie a SIPP) or an ISA or unwrapped.
Vanguard don't do a SIPP yet, so you'd have to look elsewhere for that.

2) Yes you can reinvest dividends, but would one or more funds (such as VLS, but there are others) be more suitable than shares?
For platforms, try seaching the forums for "Snowman's spreadsheet"

bigadaj

villieb wrote: »

Hello!

I am after some advice on two subjects. If I need to split this into two separate threads then I will.

When it comes to investing I really don't know where to start.... there's a wealth of information and i can't make sense of it... platform fees etc...

1) I am looking at investing into a fund, possibly the VLS, drip feeding about £200 a month into this fund, via a stocks and shares ISA platform. I don't know where to turn... Go directly to Vanguard / HL / other providers?

2) My mum has thousands of tesco shares from share incentive schemes and through dividends over the last few decades and i've been thinking of moving these into a stocks and shares ISA. I know that I have to sell the shares and re-buy them within a stocks and shares ISA. Can I re-invest dividends in a S&S isa? again - which platform would I head towards and how can I compare them all.

Apologies in advance if I haven't provided enough information....

Thanks for reading...

For your own research then have a look at the monevator website, you can also read Tim hales book, smarter investing. These two are good basics to show you the principles behind investing, they are both passive biased though, some believe managers add value some think that trackers are better, I think it depends on the sector, geography etc

Starting from scratch then you could put the £200 a month into one of the vls funds, maybe 60, with a low percentage provider, I use Charles Stanley direct and they are fine, others are available, as noted above search for snowmans spreadsheet on these forums.

On the other point then the main thing to say is if tesco shares are all your mother holds then sell a chunk and invest it into a diversified fund, single comoany shares are very risky. You may thing tesco are invulnerable but many firms have gone bust or had huge value lost in shirt periods of time, Lloyds, rbs, bp etc, those three were all far larger than tesco.

Alexland

1) If you want to regularly buy small amounts of VLS in an ISA wrapper then it is likely that the cheapest option would be direct with Vanguard. They only charge 0.15% pa for the platform (plus 0.22% cost incurred inside the VLS fund), there are no trading fees and you can be fully invested (so no need to keep a cash balance to pay the platform fee as it will deduct from the unit quantity automatically). You haven't told us what goal you might be investing for?

2) Holding single company shares is high risk. Holding lots of them is even higher risk. My parents held lots of employee purchase shares in AIG long after the minimum period and saw the majority of the value destroyed in the 2008 financial crisis when AIG didn't recover. A diversified investment containing thousands of shares and a range of asset types is more likely to grow, preserve capital and deliver results consistent with market performance. What is your mother's goal for this investment?

Alex

Tony12345

If you was to pick a fund i choose Fidelity Enhanced Income Class W why well simple put they invest in HSBC,GlaxoSmith and Unilever and a few others i believe there good companies

HL is what i use why because it does not change me a fee to be inactive just a yearly fee if i am not mistaken

Eco_Miser

Tony12345 wrote: »

If you was to pick a fund i choose Fidelity Enhanced Income Class W why well simple put they invest in HSBC,GlaxoSmith and Unilever and a few others i believe there good companies

As do many other funds.

Tony12345 wrote: »

HL is what i use why because it does not change me a fee to be inactive just a yearly fee if i am not mistaken

Iweb doesn't charge me a fee to be inactive, AND it doesn't charge me a yearly fee either.


SnowMan's spreadsheet

AndyT678

Tony12345 wrote: »

If you was to pick a fund i choose Fidelity Enhanced Income Class W why well simple put they invest in HSBC,GlaxoSmith and Unilever and a few others i believe there good companies

HL is what i use why because it does not change me a fee to be inactive just a yearly fee if i am not mistaken

Why would you chose a poorly diversified fund that's 90% UK equity with an OCF of 0.95% held on one of the most expensive platforms around over a well diversified option held on a cheap platform? There's about 1% p.a. to gain in fees alone even before considering the benefits of a better asset allocation.

TrustyOven

Just a heads-up:

Tony12345's other posts seem like copy/paste, broken English or pointless few-word replies. Triggers my internal spam-detector.

bowlhead99

TrustyOven wrote: »

Just a heads-up:

OP's other posts seem like copy/paste, broken English or pointless few-word replies. Triggers my internal spam-detector.

By "OP" I assume you don't mean it in the traditional sense of the original poster of the thread "villieb", but Tony12345?

I agree I wouldn't take Tony's advice - he's not much of an investing expert

TrustyOven

bowlhead99 wrote: »

By "OP" I assume you don't mean it in the traditional sense of the original poster of the thread "villieb", but Tony12345?

I agree I wouldn't take Tony's advice - he's not much of an investing expert

Ooops! Sorry. Yes, I meant Tony12345.
I'll edit my post now.

AnotherJoe

villieb wrote: »

2) My mum has thousands of tesco shares from share incentive schemes and through dividends over the last few decades and i've been thinking of moving these into a stocks and shares ISA. I know that I have to sell the shares and re-buy them within a stocks and shares ISA.

Let say, as a thought experiment, that your mum has £20,000 in cash.
And lets say she is now looking to invest that entire sum.
Would you advise her to spend that entire amount on Tesco shares?

If you would, take yourself off somewhere safe and lie down until that crazy proposal passes and you become rational.

If you wouldnt, why on earth would you hang on to them now?

p.s for the avoidance of doubt, this is nothing to do with whether Tescos's shares are a good or a bad investment. This would just be a very high risk investment by virtue of it all being in one company.

Unless of course your mum has say a million quid invested already and the £20k is just a relatively small dabble in which case its OK if you think Tesco has good prospects. As you've written it, this would seem to be her whole investment pot, eg 100% of what she is investing?