Multiple portfolios in different wrappers

pip895

Between myself and OH we have no less than 10 "portfolios" for instance we each have 2x S&S Isas (on two different platforms) + 2 x SIPPs + unwrapped investments too.  

My largest portfolio (high 6 figures) has ended up with 20 "funds" (including etfs &ITs etc.) which I am aware is on the high side - I'm intending to trim it down a bit, but I am struggling.  I have a foot firmly in both camps when it comes to active v passive so have about 50% in passive investments - mainly HMWO and the other 50% in active vehicles from PNL and Fundsmith to SMT and Mathews China SC.  I maintain a similar equity percentage and asset allocation in each wrapper but do it with different funds.  In the larger portfolios I have separate funds for individual geographic areas and sectors, whereas I tend to use multi asset funds, or at least less specialist funds, in the smaller portfolios. So in all OH & I together have more than 40 different funds - is this ridiculously ott?   I avoid anything being less than 5% of any wrapper/portfolio but many individual funds are far less than 5% of the total - not sure it matters as they form part of a "theme" e.g. emerging markets which is more than 10% in total?? 
 
What do others do - do you 1.Have different themes in each wrapper (if so how do you rebalance?), 2.keep the same funds in each wrapper despite difference in scale 3.Have core funds in all all wrappers and split more specialist funds between them (e.g have a Chines small company fund in your Isa and a Japanese SC fund in your SIPP), or 4.  have the same core funds in each and add satellite funds only to the bigger wrappers..  

dunstonh

I have a foot firmly in both camps when it comes to active v passive 

The hybrid approach is popular.  So, nothing wrong with that.

 I avoid anything being less than 5% of any wrapper/portfolio but many individual funds are far less than 5% of the total - not sure it matters as they form part of a "theme" e.g. emerging markets which is more than 10% in total??

5% is probably too high for a portfolio of your size.   Emerging Markets tend to be closer to 3-5% currently although could be high if you have a high risk profile.  Japan and Asia are two others that tend to fall below 5% a lot of the time along with property.

What do others do - do you 1.Have different themes in each wrapper (if so how do you rebalance?), 

Wrapper shouldn't make any different and some consolidation of platforms/providers may not go amiss.

Linton

I have 3 very distinct portfolios (Growth, Wealth Preservation, Income) spread over 4 environments on 3 platforms - his & hers ISAs and SIPPs.  There is no option of merging these as you cant transfer money between them whilst retaining its tax status.  In theory it may look sensible to keep one portfolio per environment.  However as soon as  you start rebalancing you could get bits of every portfolio on everywhere.  However this is constrained somewhat as all the Income portfolio funds are held together.

Management is not that difficult  as I always look at things from the portfolio point of view using MS Money but appropriate spreadsheets or other portfolio management tools could do the job as well. Where a particular fund is held is a secondary detail - it may well be on multiple environments.  However I may sell a fund in one environment and buy it in another to avoid too much spread.

I dont see how you can have 10 different  portfolios though.  I assign a different  high level objective to each of mine and would struggle to find 10 high level objectives sufficiently dfferent to justify their own portfolio. Since each portfolio is so different there is very little duplication.

 With a total of 21 funds and an overall value in the high 6 figures there are no holdings below 5% of their particular portfolio. The largest holding is about 5 times the smallest - I dont use a core/satellite approach.  The funds are all active though I am considering switching to a passive for US large companies.

Thrugelmir

What are you modelling your portfolio allocations on?  Sounds as if you've ended up with a highly correlated portfolio. 

pip895

Our 10 "portfolios" (bunch of funds etc in a wrapper) probably the wrong term sorry - consist of two isas each, one on HL the other on iWeb and SIPPs on HL split into crystallised and uncrystallised funds + unwrapped funds (VCTs mainly) and cash in Active savings.
My overall allocation is:- 
Cash 10%
Bonds 6%
Wealth Preservation 10%
Gold 5%
Property 4%
Global passive 12%
Global active 12%
UK passive 5%
UK active 12%
Europe 6%
Japan & Asia ex Jap 8%
Emerging 10%
I try to keep a similar split in each of the wrappers although cash is concentrated in the un wrapped portion.
Apart from Emerging markets being high which I am OK with is anything else "unusual" 

pip895

Linton said:

I have 3 very distinct portfolios (Growth, Wealth Preservation, Income) spread over 4 environments on 3 platforms - his & hers ISAs and SIPPs.  There is no option of merging these as you cant transfer money between them whilst retaining its tax status.  In theory it may look sensible to keep one portfolio per environment.  However as soon as  you start rebalancing you could get bits of every portfolio on everywhere.  However this is constrained somewhat as all the Income portfolio funds are held together.

Management is not that difficult  as I always look at things from the portfolio point of view using MS Money but appropriate spreadsheets or other portfolio management tools could do the job as well. Where a particular fund is held is a secondary detail - it may well be on multiple environments.  However I may sell a fund in one environment and buy it in another to avoid too much spread.

I dont see how you can have 10 different  portfolios though.  I assign a different  high level objective to each of mine and would struggle to find 10 high level objectives sufficiently dfferent to justify their own portfolio. Since each portfolio is so different there is very little duplication.

 With a total of 21 funds and an overall value in the high 6 figures there are no holdings below 5% of their particular portfolio. The largest holding is about 5 times the smallest - I dont use a core/satellite approach.  The funds are all active though I am considering switching to a passive for US large companies.

I have noted your 3 distinct portfolios mentioned before and wondered how you managed them.  I have Growth, Wealth preservation and Income funds in each wrapper and rebalance between them.  I don't like the idea of having 20 funds in some of my smaller "environments" - I prefer to reduce the fund count but use different funds - for instance I might use a global fund with a multi asset fund and a wealth preservation fund to give me an approximation of the asset allocation I require.  This does tend to drive my total fund count up though as they will be different funds to those used in my larger "environments"/wrappers

Linton

Having multiple portfolios each effectively doing the same job seems pointless to me.  The purpose of splitting a portfolio should be to simplify management since each one can be highly focussed on a single objective.  If you have an overarching strategy why do you need more than one way of implementing it?

I am happy to explain how my portfolios are managed, but it would be helpful if your queries were more specific. A full description with reasons for the choices made would be far too long for me to write and you to read.

Thrugelmir

pip895 said:

Our 10 "portfolios" (bunch of funds etc in a wrapper) probably the wrong term sorry - consist of two isas each, one on HL the other on iWeb and SIPPs on HL split into crystallised and uncrystallised funds + unwrapped funds (VCTs mainly) and cash in Active savings.
My overall allocation is:- 
Cash 10%
Bonds 6%
Wealth Preservation 10%
Gold 5%
Property 4%
Global passive 12%
Global active 12%
UK passive 5%
UK active 12%
Europe 6%
Japan & Asia ex Jap 8%
Emerging 10%
I try to keep a similar split in each of the wrappers although cash is concentrated in the un wrapped portion.
Apart from Emerging markets being high which I am OK with is anything else "unusual" 

Global will cover UK, European and Japanese stocks. 
PNL holds Unilever. Microsoft and Alphabet as three of the top holdings. 
PNL holds gold . 
Are global active/passive and UK active/passive overlapping as well? 

pip895

Linton said:

Having multiple portfolios each effectively doing the same job seems pointless to me.  The purpose of splitting a portfolio should be to simplify management since each one can be highly focussed on a single objective.  If you have an overarching strategy why do you need more than one way of implementing it?
I am happy to explain how my portfolios are managed, but it would be helpful if your queries were more specific. A full description with reasons for the choices made would be far too long for me to write and you to read.

OK taking a step back we have just one ambition which is to have plenty of cash to live off for the next 20-30 years and hopefully leave some inheritance at the end of it, but that is less of a priority - I prefer the idea of gifting whilst alive
There isn't a great distinction between investments in SIPPs and ISAs in that we are likely to be drawing down from them both over the next few years.  
I suppose you could say I have just one portfolio split into a series of compartments of different sizes.  It is the difference in size that ends up increasing the "investment vehicle"/fund count.  I want to be able to rebalance in all compartments so all need to have a split of equity to non equity - as an example in a small "compartment"  I might have 3 funds LT global equity, VLS80 and IP Tactical Bond. These funds are not used in my larger compartments where I have less generalist funds doing the same job.  I am trying to work out if this is an issue..  It does mean that the total "portfolio" has a lot of different investment vehicles which is said to be a bad idea..
Do your separate portfolios exist together within a single compartment?

Linton

pip895 said:

Linton said:

Having multiple portfolios each effectively doing the same job seems pointless to me.  The purpose of splitting a portfolio should be to simplify management since each one can be highly focussed on a single objective.  If you have an overarching strategy why do you need more than one way of implementing it?
I am happy to explain how my portfolios are managed, but it would be helpful if your queries were more specific. A full description with reasons for the choices made would be far too long for me to write and you to read.

OK taking a step back we have just one ambition which is to have plenty of cash to live off for the next 20-30 years and hopefully leave some inheritance at the end of it, but that is less of a priority - I prefer the idea of gifting whilst alive
There isn't a great distinction between investments in SIPPs and ISAs in that we are likely to be drawing down from them both over the next few years.  
I suppose you could say I have just one portfolio split into a series of compartments of different sizes.  It is the difference in size that ends up increasing the "investment vehicle"/fund count.  I want to be able to rebalance in all compartments so all need to have a split of equity to non equity - as an example in a small "compartment"  I might have 3 funds LT global equity, VLS80 and IP Tactical Bond. These funds are not used in my larger compartments where I have less generalist funds doing the same job.  I am trying to work out if this is an issue..  It does mean that the total "portfolio" has a lot of different investment vehicles which is said to be a bad idea..
Do your separate portfolios exist together within a single compartment?

The Income portfolio is in one "compartment".  The other 2 portfolios are spread over all compartments, including the predominately Income one, as a result of and to facilitate rebalancing or reallocation of assets. Frequently individual funds are held in more than one portfolio.

The overall pot is managed by tracking the portfolios.  I only worry about which investment is held where when making changes to the funds and rebalancing.

pip895

Thrugelmir said:

pip895 said:

Our 10 "portfolios" (bunch of funds etc in a wrapper) probably the wrong term sorry - consist of two isas each, one on HL the other on iWeb and SIPPs on HL split into crystallised and uncrystallised funds + unwrapped funds (VCTs mainly) and cash in Active savings.
My overall allocation is:- 
Cash 10%
Bonds 6%
Wealth Preservation 10%
Gold 5%
Property 4%
Global passive 12%
Global active 12%
UK passive 5%
UK active 12%
Europe 6%
Japan & Asia ex Jap 8%
Emerging 10%
I try to keep a similar split in each of the wrappers although cash is concentrated in the un wrapped portion.
Apart from Emerging markets being high which I am OK with is anything else "unusual" 

Global will cover UK, European and Japanese stocks. 
PNL holds Unilever. Microsoft and Alphabet as three of the top holdings. 
PNL holds gold . 
Are global active/passive and UK active/passive overlapping as well? 

In some cases this overlap doesn't exist in a single compartment but there is undoubtedly some duplication - I do try and ensure that funds that are tightly correlated don't sit together.  The ~10% of PNL which is gold is included in my overall gold % but some of the other funds under "Wealth preservation"  are more opaque.  With the UK funds the majority in the global funds is large cap whereas the separate uk funds are mid and small cap.