A J Bell Sipp

Seldonista

MinuteNoodles said:

eatmyshorts said:

what are people's opinions regarding picking out 5/6 individual stocks and holding them to retirement

Don't. You want to be diversified as much as possible which means you want to own as many stocks in as many companies as you can so if one goes down it doesn't take a chunk of your money with it. To do that you need to look at index funds where you buy a unit of a fund which has shares in every single company in the FTSE100 or S&P500 for example, or ones like Vanguard Lifestrategy which do similar but one fund covers multiple countries and also has a bit of bonds mixed in to mitigate the damage in a downturn. VLS80 which I have for example consists of 80% shares from several thousand companies and 20% bonds. Bonds are good as you reach retirement because they're pretty safe. A bond is basically a government or company saying "we want to borrow this amount and on this date we will pay back that amount plus this amount in interest" and whilst the company ones aren't 100% guaranteed safe they're almost as good as. If it gets to the state that the governments don't pay their bonds then the returns on your investment will be the least of your worries.

That's the most accurate, concise description of "how to invest for dummies" I've ever seen.

bowlhead99

eatmyshorts said:

Ok cool, thanks BH for your constructive and helpful advice. 

No problem, a shame my post got 'disappeared' 

AnotherJoe

eatmyshorts said:

Ok, so I've not done anything with my funds yet but have been trying to educate myself regarding investing. Looking at my timeframe of 8 years till retirement and the medium term outlook regarding growth ,what are people's opinions regarding picking out 5/6 individual stocks and holding them to retirement but also if looking at a large profit then cashing in and reinvesting. Have so far considered RR, Unilever, L&G, and Royal Mail. 

Brilliant idea as long as you have a Tardis.
Failing that, use an active fund that meets your risk criteria. If interested I could suggest a few. 

Failing that choose a global fund index tracker  (please not VLS).

eatmyshorts

Hi, many thanks for the replies. So this is what I have done today.....Joe you're not going to be happy 😁
£15000 in VLS 80
£5000 in Royal London sustainable
£5000 in iShares S&P 500 tech sect etc.
Couldn't resist a speculative punt so have £500 in Seeing machines (SEE) @ 2.90
£7000 left in cash for possible top ups.
I've tried to keep the fees as low as possible, whataya think?

eatmyshorts

typo *etf.

Thrugelmir

Strap yourself in and enjoy the roller coaster ride. Never lose sight for the rationale behind buying the individual investments. Hanging on to poorly performing ones in the hope of recovery is a mistake made by many. 

AnotherJoe

eatmyshorts said:

Hi, many thanks for the replies. So this is what I have done today.....Joe you're not going to be happy 😁
£15000 in VLS 80
£5000 in Royal London sustainable
£5000 in iShares S&P 500 tech sect etc.
Couldn't resist a speculative punt so have £500 in Seeing machines (SEE) @ 2.90
£7000 left in cash for possible top ups.
I've tried to keep the fees as low as possible, whataya think?

I think you'll get poorer performance with VLS80 than other similar products   and also if this is a long term investment the 20% bond element is just a performance drag for no real gain.  Go 100% equities or something more meaningful like 40% bonds.