Cash in Stocks and Shares ISA. Looking for a safe harbour .

JeffZTT

My wife and I have some £180k in cash in our Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) Stocks and Shares ISA . 

We are not to confident about the immediate economic outlook and have decided to give shares a miss for a year , maybe longer . So, we are looking for for the Holy Grail - find a safe haven for the above amount with some annual yield , say 6 per cent within our ISA's if possible . I have been the phone to HL re Bonds but I thought I should throw this one open as I am quite naïve re Bonds 

The basic question is what would you do with the above amount , bearing on mind that we are in our sixties . 

Keep_pedalling

Do you have any short term plans for this money? 

Albermarle

You can not get 6% without taking some risk. 
You can currently get around 4.5% for a  fixed term savings account, or 4.25% for a fixed rate ISA . You would beed to transfer out of the HL S & S ISA to take advantage of these.

We are not to confident about the immediate economic outlook and have decided to give shares a miss for a year , maybe longer

The immediate economic outlook is only partly relevant when it comes to stock markets, as they tend to look ahead by a year or two. Often markets will rise even when the economy is hitting rock bottom.
Jumping in and out of investments, is usually not a recommended or successful strategy, unless you are some kind of professional trader.
The S&P 500 is 6.5% up already this year. European indexes are up around 10% in January ( except UK)

Beddie

The following are known as wealth preservation funds, as they try to give a positive return whatever the markets, but obviously they are not always capable of doing so and the returns may be lower than a more adventurous investment:

Ruffer Diversified Return or Total Return (very similar)
Troy Trojan
CG Absolute Return

Have a look at their performance over time and see if they meet your needs.There are other similar funds too, including investment trusts as well, that others may mention.

Perhaps some in these and some in fixed rate savings accounts for a year or two, whatever you feel comfortable with.

Richard1212

If you are reviewing your decision in a year, I can only agree with the suggestion that , if you require 100% certainty, you go for the highest fixed term savings account you can find----but it will be short of your 6% Holy Grail. 

JeffZTT

Beddie said:

The following are known as wealth preservation funds, as they try to give a positive return whatever the markets, but obviously they are not always capable of doing so and the returns may be lower than a more adventurous investment:

Ruffer Diversified Return or Total Return (very similar)
Troy Trojan
CG Absolute Return

Have a look at their performance over time and see if they meet your needs.There are other similar funds too, including investment trusts as well, that others may mention.

Perhaps some in these and some in fixed rate savings accounts for a year or two, whatever you feel comfortable with.

Thanks for that , I shall have a look . I do have fixed rate savings accounts at £85 per bank so I might settle for a mixture this week .

eskbanker

JeffZTT said:
I do have fixed rate savings accounts at £85 per bank

You won't get much interest from 85 quid

JeffZTT

Ah ,   missed a K .   

JeffZTT

Keep_pedalling said:

Do you have any short term plans for this money?       No short term plans but now looking at funds .

JeffZTT

Albermarle said:

You can not get 6% without taking some risk. 
You can currently get around 4.5% for a  fixed term savings account, or 4.25% for a fixed rate ISA . You would beed to transfer out of the HL S & S ISA to take advantage of these.

Thanks, where have you seen a 4.25% fixed ISA rate , if you don't mind me asking .  

dunstonh

We are not to confident about the immediate economic outlook and have decided to give shares a miss for a year , maybe longer 

So, you are going to wait for the investments to go back up in value before you buy into them at higher prices.  Therefore missing out on the gains and possibly buying high just in time for them to go down again.

So, we are looking for for the Holy Grail - find a safe haven for the above amount with some annual yield , say 6 per cent within our ISA's if possible . 

When you find that, let us all know.

The basic question is what would you do with the above amount , bearing on mind that we are in our sixties . 

Start to educate yourself on investments as you seem to believe that buying investments when they are cheaper is not a good idea but buying them when they are more expensive is.

Markets look ahead.  Everything we know and what is expected ahead is priced in already.  The unknowns are not priced in but the markets are already looking at the recovery stage, bar any new information that is negative and unexpected.   October last year was the low point.   You have already missed out on 5-10% of this stage of the recovery.     It could go down again but data has been coming in that is not bad as expected.   It would take another unknown/unexpected event to turn it for the worse.