Transferring a S&S ISA (to Trading 212)

efunc

I'm no economist by any means, and this is not the place to discuss geopolitics or systems theory, I'm just your average punter; however I will just say that I feel fairly happy to have a cash heavy portfolio just now with the freedom to set a more tangible course in the next year or so. No great loss to me, and plenty of potential grief to avoid.

To those comparing previous market wobbles to the current picture may be seeing something different to me. I would say 1992, 2008 2022 etc were seismic ripples within a much larger macro cycle. Looking further back in history to the start of the 20th century is not really indicative of where we are now. The USA holds 39 trillion USD of debt with a trillion in interest payments on that a year alone, which are set to go up. The rest of the world is dumping US Treasuries while they can and loading up on gold. China has quietly reduced its holdings from 1.4 trillion to just 600 billion. The GCC is increasingly pulling its support for US tech and AI and the energy shock will cast a huge shadow over that anyway and the US had ostensibly bet the house on AI dominance since it has little else have exported manufacturing to China, like it 'encouraged' the UK and Europe to do. 

In previous financial crisis, global reserve currency status, the petro dollar, hegemony and the absence of any real external economic competition meant that the US could just print more dollars and fake continued success by pumping the stock market. I could of course be very wrong but it looks like fiscal dominance and multi-polarity is ahead which is a very different picture to anything we've seen in over 100 years. All the warfare looks to me to be a carefully scripted transition to this new world (instead of the prolonged WWIII and a total collapse) with the few sovereign entities left standing and transnational fund managers like Blackrock, Jane Street, JPM, GCC, China, Russia, Norway, Singapore, BRICS, etc managing new capitol flows. 

Like I say, it's way too much for me to take in, and I will obviously have missed the key moves, but through it all my motivation is capital preservation, not wipeout, so staying out of equities for a year or so is just my way of navigating things. Your millage may differ, particularly if you are already invested.

pafpcg

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81958858#Comment_81958858

Thanks for that link to Trading212's list of securities. I checked a sample of my 35yr+ S&S portfolio and found all of the investment trusts, though some of them were tricky to find - T212's search function is unreliable - it doesn't pick-up some of the LSE Symbol codes, requiring a search on the IT's name. But I did find a couple of ITs where my holding exceeded T212's maximum, and quite a few where combining my partner's holdings and mine would be above T212's limit.

I should point out that I've no plan to move my S&S ISA to T212 - I'm quite content with the IWeb/SW service and charges.

Ayr_Rage

@pafpcg when I transferred my HL stocks ISA to T212, as an in specie transfer, the number of ALW shares was way in excess of the T212 holding limit for that IT and it went through with no issue.

The problem only became apparent when I tried to reinvest a dividend a few months later.

Go figure!

efunc

Perhaps Trading 212 is a good starter platform because of the low fees, but for larger portfolios ii would be more suitable, and still cheap because of capped fees?

seacaitch

Like I say, it's way too much for me to take in, and I will obviously have missed the key moves, but through it all my motivation is capital preservation, not wipeout, so staying out of equities for a year or so is just my way of navigating things.

Your thesis anticipates tough times in the year ahead - and current events probably embolden you into believing you're on the right track - but what if markets don't cooperate with you?

What is the signal you're looking for to begin investing? Is it lower equity prices? How low? Or do the runes need to improve also? What if the runes stay bad but equity prices go higher?

Essentially, in a year's time, what's the likelihood that you're still in the same position as now, still seeing reasons to justify why TODAY is not the right time to start investing? High, probably!

In your shoes I would begin slowly facing my fears by implementing an "automated" process to eventually get invested to that target level of equities via regular purchases (between weekly and monthly) over a set period of time of your choosing.

Given your situation (lack of investment history) and reservations, I would make that period of time very lengthy compared to what someone might normally choose for averaging into markets, accepting that this is, on average, a theoretically inefficient manner of investing a lump sum. Say, 9-18 months. The intention would be to slowly desensitise you to market fluctuations and changes in the value of the invested money.

For you to have a long term future as an investor, you need to view invested money differently to cash savings, and come to terms with the concept that its value can and will vary significantly over time.

You see, even if you're correct in your thesis and markets tanked in the coming year, allowing you to become invested at lower prices, in the future markets will experience turbulent periods again - and regularly - and if you've not yet come to terms with this aspect there's every chance that future volatility would just unseat you later. Or worse, you see lower prices in the coming year and extrapolate that even lower prices will follow, causing you to never actually buy.

In summary, I suspect your current approach is you rationalising a way for you to postpone, to some future unspecified date, doing something that you're uncomfortable with. Until you bite the bullet, it's probably going to remain that way, and you'll never get the money invested because there's always something to worry about in markets.

Ayr_Rage

@efunc having an ISA portfolio in excess of £900,000 and not paying any fees at all is a great situation to be in.

For the reinvested dividends and this year's ISA allowance, buying without commission is a nice change and even though I've had to diversify a bit due to the holding limit imposed by T212.

I even took a few punts and got a nice surprise when I bought IAG shares and found that as they are a Spanish company Stamp Duty was not payable either.

The only things I struggle with is finding my way around the T212 app at times.

Sam_666

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81962570#Comment_81962570

Ehh? How can capped fee be cheaper then fee free?
Most Vanguard eft have no limits on holding.

efunc

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81962620#Comment_81962620

If you'd followed the thread you'd know that apparantly "T212 limits the number of shares that can be traded or held in a particular stock." Not so with ii

subjecttocontract

Shouldnt this be in the ISA section of the forum ?

masonic

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81962570#Comment_81962570

I'm using it in conjunction with SWSD (which is effectively free as I don't trade). When your portfolio gets large enough, it is worth not having all eggs in one basket. I'm also more comfortable having the bulk of my assets under the umbrella of a major banking group.