&me Investment performance

Frequentlyhere

With &me closing it's doors and it being nearly a year, it seems a good time to look how it actually fared relative to the alternatives.

My funds were invested on June 14th 2023 in the 5/6 risk level portfolio type they offered. My portfolio is currently 73% equity, 20% bonds and 7% cash. They have varied the composition through the year, but I don't think it's necessary to go into those weeds for this fagpacket calc.

So what sort of performance would I hope for/expect? 

In that time, an unhedged global tracker is up 18%.
A global bond fund is up 3%.
Cash is up, let's say, 4%.

13.14%+0.6%+0.28% =  circa 14%.  

I can't recall &me's investment fees, so let's just call them 1%. So all in I'd hope for 13%

What is my actual performance? 8.33%. Hum.

So, there could be a little lag involved, perhaps a small divi or two to come in, but overall performance seems a long way off what I'd have achived if I'd have invested myself.

As another check, how does this compare to an off the shelf multi-asset fund? Well, Vanguard lifestrategy 80 is up 13.7% in that period and lifestrategy 60 is up 12.7%. So we're again hovering around 13% for what this sort of &me investment portfolio should look like.

So my initial conclusion is that the active investment choices made by &me must have been very poor, as there is a huge gap between what would have been achieved by doing it yourself or using an off-the-shelf equity/bond fund. 

Agree/disagree?

MX5huggy

Not familiar with &me but sounds similar to Wealthify who I’ve had £75 with since 15th June 2023 in their highest risk option today it’s worth £84.49 12.65% ROI or 13.56% annualised. 

Should get my £75 cash back (or was it 50) which will make me look like an investing genius next month. 

Frequentlyhere

Yeah @MX5huggy, it is the same bag. I've had £100 cashback from &me so I'm not going to be writing to the papers over this ;-)

But I'm still curious as to why it appears to have underperformed (as far as I can tell).

MX5huggy

You would have to dig into what it’s invested in. Wealthify are using very vanilla Index funds with a UK over weight. Once they pay out I’ll probably cash out and get 2 more units of VEVE. 

wmb194

MX5huggy said:

Not familiar with &me but sounds similar to Wealthify who I’ve had £75 with since 15th June 2023 in their highest risk option today it’s worth £84.49 12.65% ROI or 13.56% annualised. 

Should get my £75 cash back (or was it 50) which will make me look like an investing genius next month. 

M&G's &me is a rebranded Wealthify. When it takes a monthly contribution DD the bank statement states, "Wealthify." M&G owns a large stake in Wealthify.

Edit: I meant MoneyFarm, not Wealthify. Similar robo-investing idea.

Frequentlyhere

wmb194 said:

MX5huggy said:

Not familiar with &me but sounds similar to Wealthify who I’ve had £75 with since 15th June 2023 in their highest risk option today it’s worth £84.49 12.65% ROI or 13.56% annualised. 

Should get my £75 cash back (or was it 50) which will make me look like an investing genius next month. 

M&G's &me is a rebranded Wealthify. When it takes a monthly contribution DD the bank statement states, "Wealthify." M&G owns a large stake in Wealthify.

I'm not sure that's right..

At the bottom of the &me account page it says "&me is a trading name of MFM Investment Ltd. " i.e. Moneyfarm.

Meanwhile, on wealthify's webpage it says they're backed by Aviva.

Morever if &me were just a rebranded wealthify, why wouldn't they be merging back there rather than into Moneyfarm?

ColdIron

Could MFM be Morely Fund Management (who I did a bit of work for in the mid noughties), Aviva's UK-based asset management business?

wmb194

Frequentlyhere said:

wmb194 said:

MX5huggy said:

Not familiar with &me but sounds similar to Wealthify who I’ve had £75 with since 15th June 2023 in their highest risk option today it’s worth £84.49 12.65% ROI or 13.56% annualised. 

Should get my £75 cash back (or was it 50) which will make me look like an investing genius next month. 

M&G's &me is a rebranded Wealthify. When it takes a monthly contribution DD the bank statement states, "Wealthify." M&G owns a large stake in Wealthify.

I'm not sure that's right..

At the bottom of the &me account page it says "&me is a trading name of MFM Investment Ltd. " i.e. Moneyfarm.

Meanwhile, on wealthify's webpage it says they're backed by Aviva.

Morever if &me were just a rebranded wealthify, why wouldn't they be merging back there rather than into Moneyfarm?

Yes, sorry, you're right, the DDs say MoneyFarm not Wealthify. That's what I get for relying on my memory and not double checking. For some reason the two are melded in my mind.

Sometimes companies like to have multi-brand strategies for differentiated offerings and pricing. After retiring it for a long time Aviva brought back the General Accident brand for car insurance.

Oakwood1972

My experience of Wealthify over 3 years in comparison to other platforms caused me to move my low risk stocks and shares ISA recently.  

Actively managed (by Wealthify) at risk level 2 lost over 1% over the period.  Evestor did far better for an almost identical time period with identical funding.

I had a sense that whatever Wealthify algorithm was triggering buy/sell it was not as good as just leaving it alone as per passive funds. 

For example, growth in an ISA in one of Vanguard’s index funds has been remarkably strong in comparison to Wealthify and Evestor.

I am no expert in such matters - but was mildly amused that actively managed funds did worse than passive funds.  .    

Alexland

I considered going for &me but was unsure they would pay cashback given I already had the Moneyfarm cashback. IMHO all these robo strategies are Meh and I prefer to put my money in simple low costs funds/etfs to get close to the assets which are the true source of returns.

granta

Alexland said:

I considered going for &me but was unsure they would pay cashback given I already had the Moneyfarm cashback. IMHO all these robo strategies are Meh and I prefer to put my money in simple low costs funds/etfs to get close to the assets which are the true source of returns.

I've moved all former robo funds into ETFs/index funds too but they were great when I was starting out and knew almost nothing. Plus have received cashback from many of the main providers which largely covered fees. 
And now that've I learnt a bit more about investing and how to minimise long-term fees, I am glad to have it as a stepping stone to having a simple tracker portfolio.
I received the &me cashback despite having MoneyFarm but they have let me withdraw early without penalty because of the move.
Overall, I've gained but would never return to robo investing.