Self-managed shares-only ISA??

Pielander

Is there such a thing?

I currently invest money in shares using an online trading company (paying £10 per transaction). It's a very neat system for dabbling in the stock market, but it occurred to me that if I invest wisely and make a profit, my profits attract tax; yet, if I were to invest in a shares-only ISA, I could effectively invest the same amount of money in shares, but the profit would be tax-free.

Is anybody aware of any products on the market whereby the customer can invest, for example, £7000 cash per year (for a Maxi-ISA) in a 'fund', then buy and sell shares of their own choosing, entirely at will, using the cash in the fund? If not, I think there should be!

Pie

dunstonh

Yes, there have been self select PEP/ISAs available for nearly 15 years now.

They tend to be poor value for unit trusts/oeics/SICAVs as their purpose is shares (or acceptable quoted investments) and are priced with that in mind. There are many providers of self select ISAs. By no means a recomendation but a popular provider mentioned on these forums is Selftrade.

Pielander

Thanks for that. It's difficult to look for something when you don't know what it's called!

ChrissyR_2

Hi Pielander,

I use Selftrade - it's the first online ISA I have had and it's OK (suits my needs at the moment).
The downside would be that they charge £12.50 a trade (so above your £10!) plus there is a £25 per year charge for the ISA (OK for the early years and once you have £50k in there nothing! - there is also a referral program which is £50 per side so this covers the first 2 year so you should have enough in by then!)
Their website is quite good and allows you to set up watchlists.
Also have limit buys functions (which have been successful about 50% of the time for me but I set tight limits). You can also buy straight from your watchlist.
They do phone as well but not ever used this.
Maybe an idea to register (which I think is free) and have a look at the watchlist and see if it list all the shares you are looking at.
Oh and they do free purchase on ETF which I think replaces the funds bit a bit

Chris

gt94sss2

Pielander wrote: »

Is anybody aware of any products on the market whereby the customer can invest, for example, £7000 cash per year (for a Maxi-ISA) in a 'fund', then buy and sell shares of their own choosing, entirely at will, using the cash in the fund? If not, I think there should be!

As dunstonh says there are such products - most of which charge an annual fee but a few which don't.

Providers include:

1) HSBC InvestDirect though you do need to have or open a (free) HSBC current account.

2) Alliance Trust

3) Selftrade who have a referral scheme where you could get up to £80 for joining them (my own details are in post 242)

The first two, charge no annual fee, Selftrade charges £25/year.

Which is best for you will depend on how much you trade etc and in which shares.

Don't forget that even outside an ISA, you don't pay Capital Gains Tax on the first £9,200 of gains/year.

Regards
Sunil

cloud_dog

Pielander wrote: »

Is there such a thing?

I currently invest money in shares using an online trading company (paying £10 per transaction). It's a very neat system for dabbling in the stock market, but it occurred to me that if I invest wisely and make a profit, my profits attract tax; yet, if I were to invest in a shares-only ISA, I could effectively invest the same amount of money in shares, but the profit would be tax-free. Pie

Pie, a question to ask is, are you sure you need to put investments into an ISA wrapper atm? Currently you can make £9200 profit in a year before incurring CGT (if you are married then you can utilise your partners CGT allowance also).

I've been doing this for a (large) nuber of years now and have only recently (last 4 years) started to move investment monies in to ISA's (again in both mine and my wife's name).

I know there is a school of thought that says you should put money in to the ISA wrapper to ensure you make use of all available tax efficient schemes. I suppose it all comes down to how much do you invest and how frequently do you trade.

The other argument to use an ISA (and the reason I'm migrating my investments across) is that at some point I will need to sell a lot of my investments to repay the mortgage, and even if I stager this over a small period of time couple / three years I am likely to incur CGT.

Just a thought.

cloud_dog

equitydealer

TD Waterhouse now have a S&S ISA which has no admin fee as long as you hold more than £3600 of shares

http://www.tdwaterhouse.co.uk/typesofaccount/tradingisa.cfm?tracker=1736

binay

I am actually in exactly the same dilemna . Being a high rate tax payer was loking at alternatives .
Have found https://www.iii.co.uk and they do not charge any annual fee and the share trades are 10 £ per transaction under ISA
Can anyone comment on them ( sorry not hijacking the thread but just adding to it as I was going thro' exactly the same thoughts as initial post)

gt94sss2

binay wrote: »

I am actually in exactly the same dilemna . Being a high rate tax payer was loking at alternatives .
Have found www.iii.co.uk and they do not charge any annual fee and the share trades are 10 £ per transaction under ISA
Can anyone comment on them

This should really be on the ISA forum but the iii service is actually run by Halifax - from my reading of the Halifax Sharebuilder and the Motley Fool Sharedealing service boards on the Motley Fool, they do seem to have more than their fair share of problems..

Regards
Sunil