Any platform where I can buy funds?

torrence

Does anyone use a dealing platform which allows you to enter the number of units of a fund or ETF you want to buy? I have tried AJ Bell and iWeb and both only allow me to enter the £ value I want to buy. Even if I have £10,000 cash on the account and 10 units would cost approx £250, I can only purchase £250 worth, I cannot buy 10 units. Because the price will change a little by the dealing cut-off point I will not end up with exactly 10 units.

I hold 3 accummulation funds wrapped in SIPPs and ISAs. Obviously the tax certs at the end of the year don't detail the dividend income received because its not taxable but I still need to know this info. I would prefer to keep the funds as accummulation.

If I could hold 10 income units of each fund in a normal dealing account, I could then easily calculate dividend income on the number of units held in my wrapped investments.

Does anyone use a platform that allow the purchase order of funds by number of units?

Thanks!

eskbanker

It doesn't answer your question I know, but why do you feel you need to know how much dividend income you received in wrapped accumulation investments? That info will be available within the public domain anyway, at a generic level, within fund factsheets, etc....

JohnRo

Well first of all why is it more difficult to calculate the dividend on fractions of units than it is on whole units, I don't understand that part at all so I'm sorry if I missed something there?

That said Charles Stanley Direct have the best platform in terms of account information available imho.

One of several account data collection sheets they offer is 'stock movements' which specifically details 'retention of income' from ACC funds held in the account.

I haven't held funds with them for a long time but can still see all my old stock movements from several years ago which amongst other things shows all the ACC fund retention of income entries.

george4064

You won't find any platform that allows you to buy a certain number of units of a fund (OEIC/UT to be specific), only exception you might get is if you speak with their dealing team on the phone and request it over the phone (however they will require you to have a sufficient cash buffer to accept any upward movements in the fund price between when you submit the order and what it trades, up to the discretion of the platform).

For ETFs you can buy specific number of units as you will receive a quote and hence know there & then how much it will cost to buy your desired number of units including dealing costs, stamp duty etc.

torrence

JohnRo wrote: »

Well first of all why is it more difficult to calculate the dividend on fractions of units than it is on whole units, I don't understand that part at all so I'm sorry if I missed something there?

That said Charles Stanley Direct have the best platform in terms of account information available imho.

One of several account data collection sheets they offer is 'stock movements' which specifically details 'retention of income' from ACC funds held in the account.

I haven't held funds with them for a long time but can still see all my old stock movements from several years ago which amongst other things shows all the ACC fund retention of income entries.

I will try them. Thanks for the suggestion.

bowlhead99

george4064 wrote: »

You won't find any platform that allows you to buy a certain number of units of a fund (OEIC/UT to be specific), only exception you might get is if you speak with their dealing team on the phone and request it over the phone (however they will require you to have a sufficient cash buffer to accept any upward movements in the fund price between when you submit the order and what it trades, up to the discretion of the platform).

It might be a surprise if you literally couldn't find *any* find platform that allows this. But you have touched on a key reason why fund manager groups and platforms don't usually expect to offer it - which is that it is not known how much a certain number of units will cost, when placing a buy order.

In order to know that you were good for it on settlement day, they would need you to have projected cleared funds of some large amount more than the latest published price would imply. No doubt they can't be bothered with the hassle of those sort of checks, when all fund managers will accept subscriptions for a known amount of cash. And a fund manager prospectus will say they accept subscriptions for a minimum amount of £value. Not for a minimum number of shares, which would allow their minimum amount of cash accepted, to fluctuate over time.

There should be no equivalent issue with placing an order to *sell* a specific number of units, because that doesn't require you to have cash reserves to pay for the order; they are paying you, once the valuation is known. Certainly AJ Bell, HL and others let you do that. So if you did really have a large cash buffer, you could buy a lot more than you wanted, then sell a specific fractional number to get back to exactly 100.0000 or 1000.0000 shares or whatever you want.

torrence wrote: »

I hold 3 accummulation funds wrapped in SIPPs and ISAs. Obviously the tax certs at the end of the year don't detail the dividend income received because its not taxable but I still need to know this info. I would prefer to keep the funds as accummulation.

If I could hold 10 income units of each fund in a normal dealing account, I could then easily calculate dividend income on the number of units held in my wrapped investments.

Does anyone use a platform that allow the purchase order of funds by number of units?

The request is somewhat nonsensical. The ACC units and INC units have different prices which will become even more substantially different over time. So just because you know you received £2.57 on an INC unit, that doesn't mean you would receive £2.57 on an ACC unit. The ACC unit will involve more asset value per share, and so on the face of it will have generated more income per share then the INC share.

Proportionally, they would generally be about the same (e.g. £2.57 dividend on an Inc unit might translate to about £3.855 dividend on an ACC unit if the ACC unit was 50% more valuable, cumdiv). But if you are only looking at proportions, you don't need to hold whole numbers of units. You could have 1167.3151 units paying £2.57 each for a total of £3000 dividends on a holding that was valued at £120,000 pre dividend. So, that would be a 2.5% payout. You might assume the £10,000 of ACC units you held, had similarly delivered the same 2.5% return, without worrying how many shares of the ACC fund you actually have.

Buying a specific number of Inc units that you don't really want, just for 'tracking' purposes, seems a very strange thing to do when funds publish their daily prices and dividend payment amounts into the public domain anyway.

JohnRo

torrence wrote: »

I will try them. Thanks for the suggestion.

Is it really that important to you?

They (CSD) may not be the cheapest option, certainly for a SIPP.

Their account fee structure is, or can be a little on the convoluted side so it's worth looking into the exact costs of holding your particular investments with them versus the costs elsewhere before going ahead.

They were at one time amongst the cheapest percentage based platforms to hold funds with but I don't think that's the case any more.

It depends on the amount of capital in question as to whether their excellent account portal and service is worth it versus lesser offerings elsewhere.

ColdIron

You might have a look at Fidelity for dividend info on acc units as they make it easily available (the Per share amount GBP column). Just to choose Fundsmith Equity as an example, click the Dividends tab halfway down

https://www.fidelity.co.uk/factsheets/Fundsmith-Equity-Fund/GB00B41YBW71-GBP/?id=GB00B41YBW71&idType=isin&marketCode=&idCurrencyId=

As with any third party site the data isn't guaranteed but may be good enough for what you want, otherwise you'll need to go to your fund provider and dig it out

torrence

bowlhead99 wrote: »

It might be a surprise if you literally couldn't find *any* find platform that allows this. But you have touched on a key reason why fund manager groups and platforms don't usually expect to offer it - which is that it is not known how much a certain number of units will cost, when placing a buy order.

In order to know that you were good for it on settlement day, they would need you to have projected cleared funds of some large amount more than the latest published price would imply. No doubt they can't be bothered with the hassle of those sort of checks, when all fund managers will accept subscriptions for a known amount of cash. And a fund manager prospectus will say they accept subscriptions for a minimum amount of £value. Not for a minimum number of shares, which would allow their minimum amount of cash accepted, to fluctuate over time.

There should be no equivalent issue with placing an order to *sell* a specific number of units, because that doesn't require you to have cash reserves to pay for the order; they are paying you, once the valuation is known. Certainly AJ Bell, HL and others let you do that. So if you did really have a large cash buffer, you could buy a lot more than you wanted, then sell a specific fractional number to get back to exactly 100.0000 or 1000.0000 shares or whatever you want.

The request is somewhat nonsensical. The ACC units and INC units have different prices which will become even more substantially different over time. So just because you know you received £2.57 on an INC unit, that doesn't mean you would receive £2.57 on an ACC unit. The ACC unit will involve more asset value per share, and so on the face of it will have generated more income per share then the INC share.

Proportionally, they would generally be about the same (e.g. £2.57 dividend on an Inc unit might translate to about £3.855 dividend on an ACC unit if the ACC unit was 50% more valuable, cumdiv). But if you are only looking at proportions, you don't need to hold whole numbers of units. You could have 1167.3151 units paying £2.57 each for a total of £3000 dividends on a holding that was valued at £120,000 pre dividend. So, that would be a 2.5% payout. You might assume the £10,000 of ACC units you held, had similarly delivered the same 2.5% return, without worrying how many shares of the ACC fund you actually have.

Buying a specific number of Inc units that you don't really want, just for 'tracking' purposes, seems a very strange thing to do when funds publish their daily prices and dividend payment amounts into the public domain anyway.

I know it seems odd. But I have investments wrapped in SIPPs and ISAs and have to complete non-UK tax returns as well as in the UK. Non-UK tax need to know what dividend income was received annually within 30 days of the year end - so UK paperwork to April is no use. I have to find a way to produce as accurate a figure as possible, but without being forced to sell all the accummulation units and buy the income version and stop automatic dividend reinvestment. If there is no way to accurately know what dividend was accummulated in the funds then I will have to sell of course. Just hoped to avoid it!

SonOf

If you have a platform with a cash account, then you can buy x number of units via the cash account with many platforms. However, if it requires a cheque or bank payment then these will normally be bought by cost not units.

coyrls

[FONT=&quot]I can’t really understand the attraction of whole numbers. Surely the process you need to go through is to find the dividends paid, e.g. here are the dividends for Fundsmith I Acc: https://www.trustnet.com/factsheets/o/lsx6/fundsmith-equity-i-acc, and multiply by the number of units held. Unless you need to do the calculation in your head, I don’t see how holding whole numbers of units is going to make that calculation easier.[/FONT]