How much gain was made?

MQA

About my investments I want to manage my investments and understand how to work out how they have been performing.

For my ‘profit on paper‘ I have used:

The total current valuation minus the total  initial investment (will need to factor in IFA fees and platforms.  as Fund manger funds have been deducted before hand so not sure whether need to work these out? As over the years and some changes in funds by ex – IFA and FM ) do I then divide the current valuation by the number of years invested? And get the paper profit, then if it is

under 5% need to make changes

5% ok  (look at each fund at a lower level)?

InvesterJones

Don't look backwards - past performance is not a guarantee of future. Ask yourself "If I was starting now, where would I invest?" and go from there.

Mark_d

Rather than looking into the calculation, I think there are significant flaws in what you're trying to do.  I think  investments should be chosen depending on your ambitions, attitude to risk, and visions of the future rather than based on a simple metric over the last 20 years.

Each fund diversifies risk across a good number of companies.  Whilst you might want to invest in more than one sector - surely investing in 30 funds makes it difficult to analyse the outlook of each fund on a regular basis?  I think you could achieve better returns by managing 2-3 funds well, rather than trying to manage 30 funds.

InvesterJones

MQA said:

@ Mark_d, my investment where selected a long time ago with the help of my ex IFA. Before deciding making any changes to my investments, I thought it would be an idea to review them, to see whether they are at, hence, my original post, and how  to make changes if any, if they can be left as they are great (I doubt it as I am aware they are more competitive prices) and also, I have some savings  I would like to invest.

But you seem to be making the decision to leave or make changes based on return, which is the wrong metric. By all means review, but review if they meet your timescales/diversification/risk/management needs primarily, and whether you can achieve those goals via a simpler/cheaper alternative.

InvesterJones

MQA said:

nvesterJones said:

But you seem to be making the decision to leave or make changes based on return, which is the wrong metric. By all means review, but review if they meet your timescales/diversification/risk/management needs primarily, and whether you can achieve those goals via a simpler/cheaper alternative.

I agree with your point, my funds have been the same for 20 years all medium risks. And I note what you have mentioned above. But I still do not understand what do I measure it against?  how do I know if the investment is doing well or not? The only think I know to measure against is the return, hence, I keep talking about it. I am aware investment is best left for a least 5 years or more, hence I have left it for so long. 

Timescale is how long to you want to keep it without touching, this lets you set volatility and therefore asset class.

Diversification is measured by asset class and global coverage, bias can be assessed by comparing to market cap weighting.

Account management is whether you want to set and forget or if you want to actively be involved.

All can be measured by looking up the assets of the funds and comparing them to other funds available for your timescale/volatility tolerance. In most cases it's not rocket science - the funds themselves produce the information in their factsheets. But decide what you want first, then review.

The 'performing well' is answered by: 'they are still representing the investment choices I want to make'

NapoleonsBoneypart

@MQA How have your investments done compared with the S&P 500?

I mean, double, treble,....??

EthicsGradient

If you want to compare funds' performance against others, Hargraves Lansdown and Trustnet both have tools that allow that. Often if you google the fund's name, one of these will turn up near the top of the results.

Here's what you can do with Trustnet:

Chart Tool | Trustnet

That's set up with 2 popular  investment trusts (F&C - international, and City of London - UK-oriented), over 5 years. You can change the timescale from its dropdown (you can go back more than 10 years by specifying an exact start date, if all the ones you're comparing existed then), and add more investments from the dropdowns on the right (first select the type (noting that, for some strange reason, ETFs often, but not always, get listed under "IA Unit Trusts and OEICs" - if you select "Exchange Traded Funds" and then the dropdowns below that don't change from a grey "loading" after several seconds, then look for ETFs under "OEICs"). Then select either a sector, or management group, and then the fund name.

As people say, past performance isn't necessarily a good guide to future, but it may give you an idea if the fund has done what you required of it and it was claimed to do, eg steady growth rather than risky rises and falls. You can compare with some indexes too, but remember that global indexes don't show the currency moves relative to the pound that UK investors see with global funds.

Over a period of 20 years, if you want an equivalent "growth per year" figure, no, don't just divide the growth by the number of years. The best you can do (and it's not ideal - see the thread in this forum about "compound interest") is work out a compound growth rate, that is the equivalent of being multiplied by the same amount each year.

So, if an investment over 20 years grew by 546%, then 100 turned into 646 - ie multiplied by 6.46. So you need the "20th root" of 6.46 - that is, 6.46 raised to the power of 1/20 . If you don't have a scientific calculator that does powers, there's an online one:
Scientific Calculator
and you'd want "6.46" , then the xy (x to the power y) button, then " ( 1 ÷ 20 ) " and "equals". or if you use a spreadsheet, "=6.46^(1/20)". This works out as 1.0977..., which is 9.77% per year.