Investment management

cloud_dog

I'm not sure RobHT can be saved.

RobHT

bowlhead99 said:

RobHT said:

 or should I decide based on some criteria?

Making decisions based on some criteria is usually for the best in most walks of life. At the moment you have just picked a bunch of overlapping funds out of a hat. The VLS60 or 80 invest in indexes holding the same underlying stocks as the six other funds you picked, and have been constructed based on some criteria. If you don't have any criteria or strategy yourself, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever to invest in 8 funds instead of just one of the lifestrategy ones.

ok, good point.
I'm just thinking, despite they are similar, they are not equal, so what I've done should have sense, diversification on highly diversified funds, why not.
The fee is just about on the percentage, it's not summed up and there are no fee for transactions, cash out or other activities that now I don't recall, it's just about what you invest per year, that's it, taken in advance if I remember well.

Rich1976 said:

Why do you hold so many different funds? Most of these would just duplicate what the life strategy funds do as that is what they invest in?
As regards your contribution question it is easy to set up a direct debit for whatever date each month and then you can always do adhoc payments whenever u like on top

The first part is clarified above.
Fine for the direct debit, I was just thinking that is better to watch the funds and buy when convenient, but seen that they are highly diversified, I think I haven't a proper way to take any good decision on it on when to buy in that month.

Audaxer said:

RobHT said:

Every month I feed all these funds.

But these 2 receive double monthly top up.

LifeStrategy 60% Equity Fund - Accumulation	12.55
LifeStrategy 80% Equity Fund - Accumulation	12.51

My question is: how do I determine when to buy with these long term plan investments?
Should I just setup a direct debit or should I decide based on some criteria?

Your portfolio seems overly-complicated with too many funds. I would roughly estimate that you are currently a bit over 80% equities with your portfolio, so I think having it all in VLS80 would give you better diversification and most likely provide a better long term outcome, especially if you are contributing to that one fund every month, and have a long-term accumulation time frame ahead of you.

I can't have better diversification if I consider only one fund...
I contribute to all the funds equally, unless the ones I specified as double from the others --> VLS 60 and 80.

dunstonh said:

The selection is a mess.  no structure and picking multiple VLS funds is pointless.   Its like you decided to spread it across random funds offered by Vanguard.

Random non exactly, I've read what they are about, and I realized it was fine to take them.
But strictly talking about what I can do from my side, it's nothing compared to what I should do with these funds, as Vanguard does, I'm not Vanguard in the end. From this point of view, I could consider my plan useless rather than wrong, so still good.
Am I wrong?

ColdIron said:

I would ditch 7 of those and choose a single Lifestrategy

Please tell me why.

ZeroSum said:

As you've got roughly same amounts in  LS40, LS60 & LS80, the LS40 & LS80 average out into LS60, so you might as well move your LS40 & LS80 accounts into LS60 unless there's a specific reason you want them separate 

They don't look exactly equal, despite they could lead to the same gain and loss at the same time in the future... The reason is that, do you consider it wrong? Why?

dunstonh said:

Another idea was to invest in bank stocks, 

If the UK and EU are heading into Japanification, the last place you want to be is the banks.

they are in complete crash in UK

No they are not.

, apparently, no one paid loans back.

How do you explain those that are?

I would sell as soon as reaches out the previous value, looking graphs, they just mess up rather than grow.

And if Japanification happens, you will have a long wait.

If you are going to hold shares, then you should never hold a single sector and you really need to have a reasonable understanding of economics.

Japanification scares me , you are talking about the debt, right?
I explain with covid-19, the biggest drop after 2008 crisis.
I wouldn't hold shares only from Banks, I would for sure go with blue chip in IT and probably pharma, but the pharma has an high competition atm, a difficult choice.
Knowledge in economics ok, for sure I need to have them if I consider banks , well, I hope they are enough .
Unless you are considering necessary economics knowledge and experience in respect of how it could affect these blue chip companies.

Thrugelmir said:

Why mix VLS with other Vanguard specific US funds ?  

What's wrong with it?
I considered these funds good for long term investment. 

RobHT

cloud_dog said:

I'm not sure RobHT can be saved.

You need to try 

Alistair31

I suspect trolling.

bigadaj

RobHT said:

cloud_dog said:

I'm not sure RobHT can be saved.

You need to try 

Holding more funds doesn't necessarily give increased divrsifiction. Look up split capital investment trusts as one example, but simply speaking theer are actually a limited number of basic investments that the funds can use, certainly large market cap equities, so your funds will all be holding faangs for world trackers and large amounts of banks, miners and oils for uk etc

cloud_dog

RobHT said:

cloud_dog said:

I'm not sure RobHT can be saved.

You need to try 

Ok, I'll bite.

Just focusing on the Vanguard Lifestrategy funds, can you please explain, and help us understand, why you chose VLS40, VLS60, and VLS80?

Can you explain why someone might buy a VLS60, for example?

What need/strategy were you trying to achieve by investing in those 3?

ZeroSum

RobHT said:

bowlhead99 said:

RobHT said:

 or should I decide based on some criteria?

Making decisions based on some criteria is usually for the best in most walks of life. At the moment you have just picked a bunch of overlapping funds out of a hat. The VLS60 or 80 invest in indexes holding the same underlying stocks as the six other funds you picked, and have been constructed based on some criteria. If you don't have any criteria or strategy yourself, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever to invest in 8 funds instead of just one of the lifestrategy ones.

ok, good point.
I'm just thinking, despite they are similar, they are not equal, so what I've done should have sense, diversification on highly diversified funds, why not.
The fee is just about on the percentage, it's not summed up and there are no fee for transactions, cash out or other activities that now I don't recall, it's just about what you invest per year, that's it, taken in advance if I remember well.

Rich1976 said:

Why do you hold so many different funds? Most of these would just duplicate what the life strategy funds do as that is what they invest in?
As regards your contribution question it is easy to set up a direct debit for whatever date each month and then you can always do adhoc payments whenever u like on top

The first part is clarified above.
Fine for the direct debit, I was just thinking that is better to watch the funds and buy when convenient, but seen that they are highly diversified, I think I haven't a proper way to take any good decision on it on when to buy in that month.

Audaxer said:

RobHT said:

Every month I feed all these funds.

But these 2 receive double monthly top up.

LifeStrategy 60% Equity Fund - Accumulation	12.55
LifeStrategy 80% Equity Fund - Accumulation	12.51

My question is: how do I determine when to buy with these long term plan investments?
Should I just setup a direct debit or should I decide based on some criteria?

Your portfolio seems overly-complicated with too many funds. I would roughly estimate that you are currently a bit over 80% equities with your portfolio, so I think having it all in VLS80 would give you better diversification and most likely provide a better long term outcome, especially if you are contributing to that one fund every month, and have a long-term accumulation time frame ahead of you.

I can't have better diversification if I consider only one fund...
I contribute to all the funds equally, unless the ones I specified as double from the others --> VLS 60 and 80.

dunstonh said:

The selection is a mess.  no structure and picking multiple VLS funds is pointless.   Its like you decided to spread it across random funds offered by Vanguard.

Random non exactly, I've read what they are about, and I realized it was fine to take them.
But strictly talking about what I can do from my side, it's nothing compared to what I should do with these funds, as Vanguard does, I'm not Vanguard in the end. From this point of view, I could consider my plan useless rather than wrong, so still good.
Am I wrong?

ColdIron said:

I would ditch 7 of those and choose a single Lifestrategy

Please tell me why.

ZeroSum said:

As you've got roughly same amounts in  LS40, LS60 & LS80, the LS40 & LS80 average out into LS60, so you might as well move your LS40 & LS80 accounts into LS60 unless there's a specific reason you want them separate 

They don't look exactly equal, despite they could lead to the same gain and loss at the same time in the future... The reason is that, do you consider it wrong? Why?

dunstonh said:

Another idea was to invest in bank stocks, 

If the UK and EU are heading into Japanification, the last place you want to be is the banks.

they are in complete crash in UK

No they are not.

, apparently, no one paid loans back.

How do you explain those that are?

I would sell as soon as reaches out the previous value, looking graphs, they just mess up rather than grow.

And if Japanification happens, you will have a long wait.

If you are going to hold shares, then you should never hold a single sector and you really need to have a reasonable understanding of economics.

Japanification scares me , you are talking about the debt, right?
I explain with covid-19, the biggest drop after 2008 crisis.
I wouldn't hold shares only from Banks, I would for sure go with blue chip in IT and probably pharma, but the pharma has an high competition atm, a difficult choice.
Knowledge in economics ok, for sure I need to have them if I consider banks , well, I hope they are enough .
Unless you are considering necessary economics knowledge and experience in respect of how it could affect these blue chip companies.

Thrugelmir said:

Why mix VLS with other Vanguard specific US funds ?  

What's wrong with it?
I considered these funds good for long term investment. 

If you have equal amounts of VLS40 & VLS80, you'll get the same results as VLS60.

Now if you wanted VLS70, you'd do this by having VLS60 & VLS80.

So there's some logic in having 2 if you wanted to tweak the bonds/equity split. But having 3 is a bit pointless, 

Audaxer

RobHT said:

Audaxer said:

RobHT said:

Every month I feed all these funds.

But these 2 receive double monthly top up.

LifeStrategy 60% Equity Fund - Accumulation	12.55
LifeStrategy 80% Equity Fund - Accumulation	12.51

My question is: how do I determine when to buy with these long term plan investments?
Should I just setup a direct debit or should I decide based on some criteria?

Your portfolio seems overly-complicated with too many funds. I would roughly estimate that you are currently a bit over 80% equities with your portfolio, so I think having it all in VLS80 would give you better diversification and most likely provide a better long term outcome, especially if you are contributing to that one fund every month, and have a long-term accumulation time frame ahead of you.

I can't have better diversification if I consider only one fund...
I contribute to all the funds equally, unless the ones I specified as double from the others --> VLS 60 and 80.

You can have better diversification with just one of the VLS funds rather than all the funds in your portfolio. One of the VLS is a professionally structured portfolio, whereas some of your index funds just duplicate what is in the VLS funds. The only reason to hold more than one VLS fund would be in you wanted a different percentage of equities from their fund options, i.e. if you wanted 70% equities you could hold VLS60 and VLS80 in equal amounts. However as the risk level of your current portfolio is just over 80% equities, you would be better served with just a VLS80 as your one and only fund.

kinger101

RobHT said:

Hi,

even if in hard moments, I decided to invest.
Currently learning all the needful, in the meanwhile, I've done the easy part:

Holdings	Current weight
LifeStrategy 40% Equity Fund - Accumulation	12.59
LifeStrategy 60% Equity Fund - Accumulation	12.55
LifeStrategy 80% Equity Fund - Accumulation	12.51
FTSE 100 UCITS ETF (VUKE)	12.01
FTSE 250 UCITS ETF (VMID)	12.09
FTSE All-World UCITS ETF (VWRL)	12.28
S&P 500 UCITS ETF (VUSA)	11.88
U.S. Equity Index Fund - Accumulation	12.52
SUM	98.43

95% likely you're trolling, as it takes some effort to construct such a bad porfolio at high cost to boot.  But I'll bite too

You have 37.5 % of you funds in what is effectively VLS60.  Which is 15% of the entire portfolio as bonds.  Why this percentage?  Hard to see what it achieves.

VLS already has a UK bias, and then you're putting in another 12.5% into FTSE 100 and 12.5% into  FTSE 250.  That's a massive home bias.  

On top of that, it sounds like you're making regular investments of possibly small amounts into ETFs, which means you have high transactional costs.  You're better off using OEICs.

RobHT

I'm a beginner, so take it for what it is.
Different VLS were for different funds and level of risk, despite the differences seemed to be very limited in terms of funds diversification.

The risk level between them is fine, 4/7 - 5/7, and plan for at least five years, one of them I remember 10 years ideally, so the others should be fine with 10 years too, why not.

Investing in different funds, looking macro performance (the easy part), considering risk / performance / timeline is fine and I consider better to divide my investment in these 2 funds, plus VLS40 (less stock more bonds).

Regarding all the others, we may argue in a different way , show me the problem there.