USS Growth Fund performance vs Vanguard passive global fund performance

Cornish_mum

Here is the info on USS private equity

https://www.uss.co.uk/how-we-invest/where-we-invest/private-market-investments

dllive

Cornish_mum said:

Here is the info on USS private equity

https://www.uss.co.uk/how-we-invest/where-we-invest/private-market-investments

Ah great - thankyou!

dllive

Hi.

Ive contacted USS and theyve said that in order to invest in the USS Global Equity Fund, I will have to move all existing contributions to the Let Me Do It option. This is because I cant have a mixture of Do It For Me and Let Me Do It strategies, it has to be one or the other.

Regards market timing, theyve confirmed it takes 3 days to seel current holdings and invest in the USS Global Equity Fund.

Given that I have another 15 years before possible retirement, any changes in the market during those 3 days that my holdings are sold/bought will have a negbliable difference - is that right?

I suppose - becuase my current Investment Builder balance is very sizeable - Im looking for some reassuarnce that Im doing the right thing (or not!)

swindiff

My Investment builder is in Sharia and Global equities, and I am very happy with their performance over the years.  You can see here how they have compared to the Growth fund in the last year, and 7 years (almost from their inception)  I would always choose the let me do it option, even if I wanted to invest in some of the "do it for me" funds, as I would not want USS to de-risk my DC pot as I approach retirement age.  My intention is to leave quite a bit invested in the DC pot after retirement, so I still would like to try and achieve decent growth beyond that time.

dllive

swindiff said:

Can you link to that page? I havnt see that before! Very useful.

Micrographia

It's in the Investment Builder section of My USS under Fund information - there is an option to look at Fund performance. Click on the + and the graph shown above opens.

Micrographia

It’s a useful tool. For example, the performance of the Global Equity and Sharia funds over the last year illustrate the potential downside of letting USS shift your pot into safer funds aimed at capital preservation rather than growth as your retirement date approaches. The Cautious Growth fund returned about 7% over the last year, the Liquidity and Bond funds about 5% each. Global Equity was above 20%, Sharia above 30%. That’s a lot of capital growth to potentially surrender and it’s as good a reason as any to switch to the “Let me do it” option.

If you have enough in the pot for a comfy retirement and absolutely can’t (or don’t want to) jeopardise that, I can see how de-risking makes sense. If your personal context means that you can afford to leave at least some of your savings invested in equities, there is the opportunity for a lot of growth and a richer retirement. At least with “Let me do it” you get to choose for yourself.

dllive

Micrographia said:

It’s a useful tool. For example, the performance of the Global Equity and Sharia funds over the last year illustrate the potential downside of letting USS shift your pot into safer funds aimed at capital preservation rather than growth as your retirement date approaches. The Cautious Growth fund returned about 7% over the last year, the Liquidity and Bond funds about 5% each. Global Equity was above 20%, Sharia above 30%. That’s a lot of capital growth to potentially surrender and it’s as good a reason as any to switch to the “Let me do it” option.

If you have enough in the pot for a comfy retirement and absolutely can’t (or don’t want to) jeopardise that, I can see how de-risking makes sense. If your personal context means that you can afford to leave at least some of your savings invested in equities, there is the opportunity for a lot of growth and a richer retirement. At least with “Let me do it” you get to choose for yourself.

Thankyou! This is a very balanced view, and has confirmed that my thinking is on the right track. Im happy to 'life style' myself as I approach retirement, and - actually, the platform does give me the granularity of control that I didnt realise I had (ie: proportioning percentages of my contributions to different funds).

Its a pity the performance graph cant go back further than a year. (unless Im missing something obvious). I quite like the tables/graphs in Hargreaves, and Vanguard, that who the cumulative, and discreet performance over many years. Those are much more meaningful/useful. 

swindiff

The graph can go back up to 7 years as illustrated in my post.

dllive

swindiff said:

The graph can go back up to 7 years as illustrated in my post.

Ugh. Thanks. I missed that! Doh!