Vanguard LifeStrategy Funds , Opinions requested.

RM

As a relatively inexperienced investor, I read around and put some money into VLS80.

Since then, read around a bit more and have now got onto ii and have about 5-6 funds mainly.

Of which, the consistently worst performer is the VLS80, looking at past performance.

I still rate myself as a fairly inexperienced investor.

I was considering leaving VLS but I wonder what experienced investors think of VLS? Am I being too hasty?

Many thanks.

Sailtheworld

It does what it claims to do which is for 80% of it to give market returns from a diversified shareholding (albeit it has a UK bias) offset by 20% in bonds.

The only reason to leave if it's not what you wanted in the first place, your risk attitude has changed or you can get the same thing cheaper.

eskbanker

In what way are the other funds genuinely comparable?  Similar risk, diversification, management style, objectives, etc?

Albermarle

Performance is largely related to the risk level of the fund and the time period you measure it .
Some managed funds outperform the market and some underperform . Also past performance is no guarantee of the future .
Some funds are not even designed to perform but to keep stable as possible .
When comparing any funds you have to be sure you are comparing apples with apples.

Sebo027

Does your platform offer an x-ray facility? It will look at your holdings across all the funds and provide a cross sectional view of your "portfolio" of holdings. What sectors, asset class, geographical region etc. You may find you'd be as well restructuring from 5-6 funds down to 2 or 3 and be able to maintain the same ratio, or perhaps adjust to suit your needs. 

coyrls

Did you choose your additional funds based on past performance?  If so, it should be no surprise that their past performance is better than LS80.  If past performance was a reliable guide to future performance, investing would be easy.

RM

All above true.

i was hoping for some experienced opinions as to whether VLS reputation for steady growth is deserved or not. Should it continue to be a regarded as a stable good value fund?

bowlhead99

RM said:

All above true.

i was hoping for some experienced opinions as to whether VLS reputation for steady growth is deserved or not. Should it continue to be a regarded as a stable good value fund?

Its growth is as steady as should be expected for the mix of equity indexes and bond indexes it holds. You would expect that every so often the fund price may drop by 40% or more and take weeks, months or years to recover, just like most funds which has 80% equities and 20% bonds. You can't remove that risk and still have 80% of your money in equities.

It hasn't changed the headlines of its asset mix since 2014, when it reduced the UK stockmarket exposure of its equities from 35% to 25% in favour of a greater exposure to international equities indexes - so it should probably 'continue to be regarded' however it has previously been regarded by competent investors in recent years.

It is relatively good value because there aren't many funds available that hold a basket of global index funds across multiple asset classes for less than its ~0.2% OCF. There are other less-good value funds where if they shaved a quarter of a percent off the annual running costs, it would still cost you over a percent per year. Whereas with this one if tried to shave a quarter of a percent off the annual running costs, all the work of the management and administration and marketing of the fund and its underlying investee funds would be costing you less than nothing. 

So, it seems 'good value' if what you mean by good value, is low running costs.  If you mean are the thousands of underlying stocks that it holds all individually 'good value' ? ...then the answer is that some will turn out to be good value and some will turn out to be worse value and some will be in the middle ; views would be subjective, but you are paying no more than the market thinks they're currently worth, for the collection of assets they hold. Exposure is taken to individual stocks within the underlying Vanguard investee funds which are using an index approach.

Sailtheworld

I replicate VLS with VWRL and VGOV - not a perfect replication but loses the UK bias, works out a bit cheaper and because I don’t really understand the basis on how the underlying VLS holdings are chosen.

If I already had VLS I don’t think I would spend 5 minutes worrying about whether to sell it though.

Mothman

My guess is that you are not comparing apples with apples. It would help people to explain if you gave details of your other funds that are comparing VLS80 against.

RM

You are probably right, I doubt if we are comparing Pink Lady’s with Cox.

Other,  more volatile funds are, Fundsmith, SMT, Baillie Gifford Global Discovery. And so forth.