Share Dealing Discussion Area

Eco_Miser

Eco_Child wrote: »

A luxury cruise or a bright shiny Rolls Royce ?
I'd far rather play simply in the sand
If I had the choice ...

So would I.
But it's nice to have the choice.

Cactus_Jack

Looking for a spot of advice if possible. Been wanting to get into investing for years, have been reading for years and decided I need to take at least some action

I decided Vanguard LifeStrategy 80% acc is a good idea for me - I am ok with the option of leaving it well alone for as long as possible. However I currently invest from my salary to a Fidelity retirement plan, specifically its going into Fid BlackRock Global Equity 50/50 Fnd C5 which was Fidelity's default choice I didn't try to change anything.

I am concerned about overlap as both funds invest in UK/US equities, albeit in varying amounts. However I do feel as though I should make additional investments and want to get started..

tarantino

Hi, this is slightly out of the current thread but I have a question about Hargreaves Lansdown's portfolio plus account. Has anyone used this? I am completely new to stocks and shares but would like to invest about 50k in them for long term growth (over 10-20 years). I understand that HL's fees are high but their performance statistics look impressive and they are rated highly as a fund broker. Any thoughts?

Thrugelmir

Cactus_Jack wrote: »

I am concerned about overlap as both funds invest in UK/US equities, albeit in varying amounts. However I do feel as though I should make additional investments and want to get started..

How much do you currently have invested?

Ifts

tarantino wrote: »

Hi, this is slightly out of the current thread but I have a question about Hargreaves Lansdown's portfolio plus account. Has anyone used this? I am completely new to stocks and shares but would like to invest about 50k in them for long term growth (over 10-20 years). I understand that HL's fees are high but their performance statistics look impressive and they are rated highly as a fund broker. Any thoughts?

I don't use HL myself so can't comment on their service.

But if you want to compare HL's services/fees against other brokers you could take a look at this article over on Monevator:

http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

bowlhead99

tarantino wrote: »

Hi, this is slightly out of the current thread but I have a question about Hargreaves Lansdown's portfolio plus account. Has anyone used this? I am completely new to stocks and shares but would like to invest about 50k in them for long term growth (over 10-20 years). I understand that HL's fees are high but their performance statistics look impressive and they are rated highly as a fund broker. Any thoughts?

Basically, HL manage some of their own funds which they call 'multi-manager' funds where they go and select a bunch of funds from other managers, pick the proportions from time to time and charge their own fees on top for doing that management, package it up and sell it to you as a fund in its own right.

So for example you could buy their 'income and growth' multimanager fund with total ongoing charges of 1.33% (including all the underlying funds' own costs, plus the HL management fees on top). Or you could buy their 'special situations' multimanager fund at 1.49%. Or you could buy both of those funds and be exposed to an average fee somewhere between the two, depending on the ratio of one fund to the other.

To help you make even fewer decisions they have the 'portfolio plus' account you mentioned: where you just pick at a very high level what kind of portfolio you think you want, and they will mash together some of their multimanager funds to make it.

So for example if you said "I would like to go on an Adventurous Growth adventure, please", they would put 80% of your money into their special situations multimanager fund and 20% of your money into the income and growth multimanager fund. In doing that, the blend of management fees and operating costs that you're exposed to would be 1.46% (the average of the 1.49% and 1.33% figures mentioned above).

There are no extra management fees for buying their multimanager funds via the 'portfolio plus' route, because all they are doing is deciding what they think you would like to be invested in out of their limited choice of multimanager fund styles, when you tell them you want 'adventurous growth' or 'balanced income' or whatever, and giving that to you. From time to time they will 'rebalance' your holdings, so if you bought the Portfolio Plus Adventurous Growth thing, which started off with 80% special situations and 20% income and growth, and the markets moved so the relative values of the funds changed to be 85%:15%, they would transfer some of your money so it was 80:20 again.

On top of the blended management fees and fund operating costs for the two or more multimanager funds you hold (e.g. the 1.46%) you pay their standard platform fee of 0.45% for (unless your portfolio's over a quarter of a million quid) So just over 1.9% in total or £955 a year on £50,000.

If you are going to invest via their expensive multi-manager funds anyway, and don't want to pick the proportions yourself because you haven't a clue, then doing it the Portfolio Plus route might make sense because they will do that auto-rebalance thing for you (moving the 85:15 back to 80:20) and you can just invest and forget. Just like you could invest and forget if you picked an off-the shelf 'all in one fund' and only had the one holding so you didn't need to rebalance.

However, the overall fees for buying expensive multi-manager funds via an expensive platform (over 1.9% in the example above) are pretty high. Although a £50k pot is relatively small compared to how much money some people have between their pensions and other investments, it is getting up towards the level at which independent financial advice from an IFA can be cost-effective.

Many of us would prefer to make our own decisions if we 'only' had £50k rather than £100k or £200k, because a few hours from an IFA every year could be a relatively high percentage of the £50k. However if your alternative that you're seriously considering is paying 1.8-.1.9% to HL for an 'execution only' non-advised service, you might find that if you shop around you can find an independent financial adviser to provide you with personalised advice for your circumstances and access to a platform and suitable investment funds for a similar overall amount of money - and a face to face service that considers what your actual needs, goals and financial circumstances actually are, handles ongoing rebalancing and maybe things like moving unwrapped assets into ISAs or pensions every year when the allowances come around.

At amounts quite a bit larger than £50k you would expect they would easily come lower than 1.9% ongoing after some initial fee. For 'only' £50k perhaps the cost would be about that. But you could meet a few IFAs for initial free discussion and find out.

As you mentioned, HL are

rated highly as a fund broker

As you also noted, they are also known for being expensive for that 'fund broker' service; other fund platforms would be half the price or less on £50k invested for the 'fund broker/platform / 0.45% a year' part of the service. My Dad uses them for his ISA and has been happy with the service and an easy to use website so can't be bothered moving to the cheaper ones I've suggested. He doesn't use the multi-manager funds though.

IMHO, it would definitely be worth looking at going the advised route if you are thinking of spending 2% of your assets every year on a combination of platform fees and fund fees. That would be eating a large piece of your return each year. Perhaps it is fine to pay that to an IFA for the comfort that what you were holding was actually the most suitable thing for your needs with the ability to make a regulatory complaint if the advice is bad; but it seems a lot to pay for what is essentially off-the-shelf, execution-only, adviceless DIY investing.

Willdabeast

Hi,

I was hoping for a bit of advice on my small fund portfolio and how well diversified you think it is. I am new to investing but picked some funds which I liked the idea of, or that had performed well up to date:

17.5% - BNY Mellon Long Term Global Equity
25% - CF Woodford Equity Income
10% - Lindsell Train Global Equity
17.5% - Rathbone Global Opportunities
30% - Woodford Patient Capital Trust

I am planning to add more to the Lindsell fund, but thought I would run this passed this forum. My portfolio size is at this stage not worth the expense of paid advice, so was hoping for any free pointers.

Many thanks

bigadaj

Willdabeast wrote: »

Hi,

I was hoping for a bit of advice on my small fund portfolio and how well diversified you think it is. I am new to investing but picked some funds which I liked the idea of, or that had performed well up to date:

17.5% - BNY Mellon Long Term Global Equity
25% - CF Woodford Equity Income
10% - Lindsell Train Global Equity
17.5% - Rathbone Global Opportunities
30% - Woodford Patient Capital Trust

I am planning to add more to the Lindsell fund, but thought I would run this passed this forum. My portfolio size is at this stage not worth the expense of paid advice, so was hoping for any free pointers.

Many thanks

Looks a bit like fashion investing. Nothing absolutely wrong but you'd normally build up a portfolio, looking at your appetite for risk dependent on other savings, investments, property etc, your age and psychology. Then allocate percentages to bonds and equities, and possibly commodities, property, private equity etc, with a breakdown geographically and potentially by sector.

The easy and quick thing to do is plug your funds into trustnet and from that you'll get an idea of your sector and geography split, as well as your biggest holdings, and from that you can see if what you hold at a base level meets your requirements and expectations.

Willdabeast

Thanks bigadaj. I would agree with you that it probably is fashion investing as those funds are popular, but I also looked along the lines of my appetite for risk, which is fairly high as i'm willing to leave the money there for a fair few years.

Will take a look at trustnet.

sabretoothtigger

A shakedown of all the brokers and charges with case studies. Pretty useful for average peeps to consider

https://www.candidmoney.com/guides