Trying to buy funds

monaymadlol

Hi I'm trying to put a little cash in funds and trackers, but the codes in articles I've seen are confusing me...do they change the name each year or something? Has to be part of my ISA allowance

I have a trader 212 and Hargreaves account.

I already have a bit of cash in vls60 via Charles Stanley ISA.

I'm looking to buy FTSE 250 (there seems to be a vls FTSE 250 tracker on trader 212), and also s&p 500 tracker (there's one on Hargreaves can't tell if it's the one) and HSBC global strategy balanced.

Is there a platform I can buy/merge? Too view all holdings?

Appreciated

tacpot12

The best site/platform I found for sorting out what to buy was Trustnet. Your can't actually buy on Trustnet, but you can create a portfolio of holdings that you want to hold or compare. Trustnet will give you the ISIN code for the fund. This code is unique to the fund and doesn't change. But many funds have different types of units (Accumulation and Income) and difference classes of Shares. The fund will have a unique code per unit/class of share combination, so it is not unusual to find one fund that has many different codes. Unfortunately it falls to you or your  adviser to figure out what type of unit and what share class you want (or can) buy. 

El_Torro

monaymadlol said:

I'm looking to buy FTSE 250 (there seems to be a vls FTSE 250 tracker on trader 212), and also s&p 500 tracker (there's one on Hargreaves can't tell if it's the one) and HSBC global strategy balanced.

Why do you want to buy a FTSE 250 fund? VLS is already overweight in the UK so I don't think that having even more investments focussed in the UK is a great idea. Also, why buy a S&P tracker? What about the rest of the world?

HSBC Global Strategy Balanced is not a bad fund to put a significant amount of money into. It's not that different to VLS60 though. No harm in owning both, but it won't make a big difference compared to having just one of the two.

As mentioned Trustnet isn't a bad place to start. You should read up on diversification as well, as this will help you decide which funds are best to include in your portfolio. 

monaymadlol

El_Torro said:

monaymadlol said:

I'm looking to buy FTSE 250 (there seems to be a vls FTSE 250 tracker on trader 212), and also s&p 500 tracker (there's one on Hargreaves can't tell if it's the one) and HSBC global strategy balanced.

Why do you want to buy a FTSE 250 fund? VLS is already overweight in the UK so I don't think that having even more investments focussed in the UK is a great idea. Also, why buy a S&P tracker? What about the rest of the world?

HSBC Global Strategy Balanced is not a bad fund to put a significant amount of money into. It's not that different to VLS60 though. No harm in owning both, but it won't make a big difference compared to having just one of the two.

As mentioned Trustnet isn't a bad place to start. You should read up on diversification as well, as this will help you decide which funds are best to include in your portfolio. 

Hi, I read that HSBC gs is different enough from vls 60 to justify owning both.

S&p 500 and FTSE 250 I've read as being 2 good trackers to invest in passively and have historically done well.

Are you saying that vls 60 should mitigate the need for FTSE 250? Then what about s&p500?

Are there other options to add to my vls 60?

Was also thinking of a REIT

El_Torro

It's true that HSBC GS and VLS60 are not identical, so owning both is certainly not a crazy thing to do. If you want to know more on what the differences are then this isn't a bad place to start: https://monevator.com/passive-fund-of-funds-the-rivals/

The problem with an S&P Tracker or FTSE tracker when you already own a substantial amount in VLS60 or HSBC GS (or both) is that these multi asset funds already have a lot invested in these trackers. So you're not really adding anything to your portfolio. Unless of course you think that the US market and / or the UK market are going to significantly outperform the global market in the future, in which case maybe you do want to have more exposure to these markets.

If you want to own funds to add to your VLS60 then it would be good to expose yourself to funds that are not highly represented in global trackers. Some examples:

A global smaller companies fund
An Emerging Markets fund
A Frontier Markets fund
Commodities
Gold
Specific industries

Personally I have a Smaller Companies fund. Because it's a global fund the companies in the fund aren't exactly small, but they are small enough to not have much representation in a multi asset fund. I'm quite happy with having this fund, but the volatility is high. So when times are good it grows fast, but during dips it crashes hard too.

comment_as...

iShares do low-fee trackers in the form of ETFs. I've never had any trouble with their codes.

https://www.ishares.com/uk

monaymadlol

El_Torro said:

It's true that HSBC GS and VLS60 are not identical, so owning both is certainly not a crazy thing to do. If you want to know more on what the differences are then this isn't a bad place to start: https://monevator.com/passive-fund-of-funds-the-rivals/

The problem with an S&P Tracker or FTSE tracker when you already own a substantial amount in VLS60 or HSBC GS (or both) is that these multi asset funds already have a lot invested in these trackers. So you're not really adding anything to your portfolio. Unless of course you think that the US market and / or the UK market are going to significantly outperform the global market in the future, in which case maybe you do want to have more exposure to these markets.

If you want to own funds to add to your VLS60 then it would be good to expose yourself to funds that are not highly represented in global trackers. Some examples:

A global smaller companies fund
An Emerging Markets fund
A Frontier Markets fund
Commodities
Gold
Specific industries

Personally I have a Smaller Companies fund. Because it's a global fund the companies in the fund aren't exactly small, but they are small enough to not have much representation in a multi asset fund. I'm quite happy with having this fund, but the volatility is high. So when times are good it grows fast, but during dips it crashes hard too.

Thank you, do you have example of the 6 or so you mentioned?

I'll probably open a HSBC gs then rather than a tracker + some of the ones you mentioned.

I was also thinking of a REIT too. What do you think?

And maybe just a small leftover chunks into some shares of Amazon, Tesla, apple, eBay/PayPal and maybe some green energy companies..or bad idea?

bowlhead99

monaymadlol said:

Hi I'm trying to put a little cash in funds and trackers, but the codes in articles I've seen are confusing me...do they change the name each year or something? Has to be part of my ISA allowance
I have a trader 212 and Hargreaves account.
I already have a bit of cash in vls60 via Charles Stanley ISA.

Remember that you can't add money to more than one  S&S ISA in the same year (unless you first transfer all your contributions from the first place to the second place). I don't know whether the ISA you're talking about adding to is at T212 or Hargreaves or Charles Stanley, which will affect what investments are available to you.

monaymadlol said

I'll probably open a HSBC gs then rather than a tracker + some of the ones you mentioned.

The Global Strategy products take care of the allocations across sectors without you needing to think about it, while targeting a range of volatility (cautious, balanced, dynamic, adventurous etc).  So yes it makes more sense to use that that to try to construct something yourself using random percentages. It certainly makes no sense to add an extra tracker like S&P500 when the S&P500 companies will be the biggest holdings of the HSBC Global Strategy or the Vanguard LifeStrategy products which you are already buying.

I was also thinking of a REIT too. What do you think?

There are many hundreds of REITs to choose from. The HSBC Global Strategy series will use property as part of its allocation and use a global REIT tracker to do that. It would be a few percent of the total allocation. So you would not need to add a separate fund if you were already happy with how they were doing it.

And maybe just a small leftover chunks into some shares of Amazon, Tesla, apple, eBay/PayPal and maybe some green energy companies..or bad idea?

It's a bad idea for you to do this IMHO. Amazon and Apple etc will already be among the largest underlying holdings of a Global Strategy or LifeStrategy product. There are tens of thousands of companies to choose from around the world, and trillions of dollars around the world being invested into them which sets the price based on supply and demand - but there's no evidence that you will personally know better than 'the market' which ones are going to be best to invest in, from their current prices that the market has set.

If you are building a sensible portfolio of funds (which  assuming you don't have hundreds of thousands of pounds to invest, may be reasonably achieved by just buying one fund-of-funds product, like HSBC Global Strategy or Vanguard Lifestrategy), you will not have any 'small leftover chunks' - because any of the money you have available to invest should be going into your investment fund portfolio. So the question of which companies to buy with 'leftover chunks' just doesn't come up, because there isn't any money left over.

monaymadlol

bowlhead99 said:

monaymadlol said:

Hi I'm trying to put a little cash in funds and trackers, but the codes in articles I've seen are confusing me...do they change the name each year or something? Has to be part of my ISA allowance
I have a trader 212 and Hargreaves account.
I already have a bit of cash in vls60 via Charles Stanley ISA.

Remember that you can't add money to more than one  S&S ISA in the same year (unless you first transfer all your contributions from the first place to the second place). I don't know whether the ISA you're talking about adding to is at T212 or Hargreaves or Charles Stanley, which will affect what investments are available to you.

monaymadlol said

I'll probably open a HSBC gs then rather than a tracker + some of the ones you mentioned.

The Global Strategy products take care of the allocations across sectors without you needing to think about it, while targeting a range of volatility (cautious, balanced, dynamic, adventurous etc).  So yes it makes more sense to use that that to try to construct something yourself using random percentages. It certainly makes no sense to add an extra tracker like S&P500 when the S&P500 companies will be the biggest holdings of the HSBC Global Strategy or the Vanguard LifeStrategy products which you are already buying.

I was also thinking of a REIT too. What do you think?

There are many hundreds of REITs to choose from. The HSBC Global Strategy series will use property as part of its allocation and use a global REIT tracker to do that. It would be a few percent of the total allocation. So you would not need to add a separate fund if you were already happy with how they were doing it.

And maybe just a small leftover chunks into some shares of Amazon, Tesla, apple, eBay/PayPal and maybe some green energy companies..or bad idea?

It's a bad idea for you to do this IMHO. Amazon and Apple etc will already be among the largest underlying holdings of a Global Strategy or LifeStrategy product. There are tens of thousands of companies to choose from around the world, and trillions of dollars around the world being invested into them which sets the price based on supply and demand - but there's no evidence that you will personally know better than 'the market' which ones are going to be best to invest in, from their current prices that the market has set.

If you are building a sensible portfolio of funds (which  assuming you don't have hundreds of thousands of pounds to invest, may be reasonably achieved by just buying one fund-of-funds product, like HSBC Global Strategy or Vanguard Lifestrategy), you will not have any 'small leftover chunks' - because any of the money you have available to invest should be going into your investment fund portfolio. So the question of which companies to buy with 'leftover chunks' just doesn't come up, because there isn't any money left over.

Very helpful, thank you.

So based on that, I may just too up the Vls or add into a riskier Vls product like vls 100, and add a chunk into HSBC gs balanced and forget about it 

I have around 2000 in the Vls 60 via Charles Stanley, and I haven't topped into my SS ISA for a few years,but want to change that by drip feed now..say 50 pcm into vls and 50 HSBC.

So what do you mean about swapping ISA allocation.. because I opened a few years ago with CSD, I can only open there a new product?
I guess HSBC is cheapest via hsbc directly?

bowlhead99

monaymadlol said

I have around 2000 in the Vls 60 via Charles Stanley, and I haven't topped into my SS ISA for a few years,but want to change that by drip feed now..say 50 pcm into vls and 50 HSBC.

So what do you mean about swapping ISA allocation.. because I opened a few years ago with CSD, I can only open there a new product?

The rule about ISAs is that you can't subscribe to two different ISAs in the same tax year (e.g. 6 April 2020 - 5 April 2021 is a tax year). So you could not put new money into Charles Stanley's ISA this tax year while also putting money into an ISA at Hargreaves, HSBC Investment Centre, Vanguardinvestor or Trading 212. 

 However, as your Charles Stanley £2000 isn't 2020/21 money, it's previous years' money, you can keep it where it is if you like and it won't stop you opening an account for all your new money somewhere else. The rule is simply that new money for the current tax year (i.e. money moved into an ISA from outside an ISA during the current tax year) must all be in one place.

It wouldn't be a problem to drip feed new money into HSBC GS and V LS funds at Charles Stanley, or at Hargreaves (more expensive than Charles Stanley) or somewhere different, as long as all that new ISA money was going into the same ISA. 

I guess HSBC is cheapest via hsbc directly?

HSBC's own 'Global Investment Centre' is a bit cheaper than Charles Stanley (0.25% vs 0.35%) and Vanguard's own VanguardInvestor site is a bit cheaper still, at 0.15%. However HSBC doesn't carry the Vanguard products and Vanguard doesn't carry the HSBC products, while Charles Stanley carries both. With the amount you're investing, the difference is only a few pounds a year so you might as well keep on going with CS if it's easier for you.

monaymadlol

Thank you!