Fund Selection

Bostonerimus1

chiang_mai said:

I struggle at times with deciding the right levels of geographic equities allocations (for me) thus reading the following link was helpful to understand that the range of alternatives (in the case of EM at least) can be very large. 

https://www.vaneck.com.au/blog/international-investing/four-ways-to-determine-your-international-equities-allocation/

Here's a second link from LSEG that discusses UK allocations, which may also be helpful to newer members.

https://www.lseg.com/en/insights/data-analytics/putting-uk-equities-in-perspective

I don't struggle with any of that and I suggest that other people to do the same.

chiang_mai

Bostonerimus1 said:

chiang_mai said:

I struggle at times with deciding the right levels of geographic equities allocations (for me) thus reading the following link was helpful to understand that the range of alternatives (in the case of EM at least) can be very large. 

https://www.vaneck.com.au/blog/international-investing/four-ways-to-determine-your-international-equities-allocation/

Here's a second link from LSEG that discusses UK allocations, which may also be helpful to newer members.

https://www.lseg.com/en/insights/data-analytics/putting-uk-equities-in-perspective

I don't struggle with any of that and I suggest that other people to do that same.

You don't speak for everyone. I didn't post those links for your benefit, as said, I posted them for the benefit of newer younger members. If this thread doesn't interest you, perhaps you'll find one that does or will start one of your own that interests you more.

chiang_mai

I also read what Investopedia has to say on the benefits of index trackers. Whilst the section does set out the benefits of index trackers it also lists some of the negatives thus it is fairly well balanced and objective. I thought the final quote below was a very solid conclusion:

"There have been studies both in favor and against active management. Many managers perform worse than their comparative benchmarks, but that does not change the fact that there are exceptional managers who regularly outperform the market. Index investing has merit if you want to take a broad economic view, but there are many reasons why it's not always the best route to achieving your personal investing goals". 

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/09/reasons-to-avoid-index-funds.asp

Eyeful

1. It is up to the investor to look into what index they put their hard earned cash.
Someone could start an index with all companies starting with the letter B, it would make little sense though..

2. The investor also needs to examine the costs of the fund that tracks the index they are using.
I still remember one fund manager that tracked the FTSE 100 but was charging 1%.
Very good for the manager but very bad for their investors!

3. There may be as you put it, "exceptional managers" who outperform an index. 
Two important questions are:
(a) how much will they be charging their investors.
(b) will they be able to outperform that index constantly, for lets say the next 20 years.

4. Having read your posts,
 I still think that for the average investor, with little or no knowledge of investing and is willing to simply
 "buy and forget" over a long period of time, say 20 years they are best buying a passive low cost Fund or ETF 
that tracks a Major World Index, like the AWCI or FTSE-All. 

With that approach, I would expect that after charges and fees are  taken in to account, they would do at lest as well, if not better than those  "exceptional managers"

chiang_mai

Eyeful said:

 I still think that for the average investor, with little or no knowledge of investing and is willing to simply
 "buy and forget" over a long period of time, say 20 years they are best buying a passive low cost Fund or ETF 
that tracks a Major World Index, like the AWCI or FTSE-All. 

I completely agree with the above.

With regard to charges: most performance figures are quoted after all costs and charges have been deducted. So as long as the fund has beaten the index, it doesn't matter to me what charges were incurred along the way.