Tracker or Managed Fund at Present??

ulysses76

I was thinking of starting regular monthly investing in a FTSE tracker (i.e getting in when the stock-market is at the bottom or at least heading that way & benefiting from the rise, if & when it comes)
Do this seem logical or would I be better off investing in a managed UK fund?
Would also appreciate pointers on which Tracker or UK fund would be best?:j
Cheers

dunstonh

Tracker is better than a passive managed although an active managed is likely to have downside protection which isnt possible in a tracker.

I think its more a question of what FTSE index you are trying to track and how you want to invest as to what the answer should be. Not everything is going down at the moment. Some things are flat so it depends on what assets you want to be heavy in.

purch

getting in when the stock-market is at the bottom

..........gissa shout when in gets there will ya ???

jon3001

Statistically the funds best positioned to outperform an index during a bear market seem to be the large-cap value sector. Indeed value funds have historically had higher long-term returns across all markets. So I'd be inclined to start my research there. Not all such funds will outperform of course and therein lies the risk.

If you decide to play things simple and go with a tracker then again there's no guarantees which index will the perform best. The default choice is to not second guess and simply buy the whole market with a FTSE-AllShare tracker. I think HSBC's is the cheapest with a TER of 0.25%.

Just because the stock market has been doing poorly doesn't mean other markets have. E.g. commodity markets have been doing very well since August when problems seem to have started with equity markets. You should aim to eventually diversify your portfolio among a variety of asset classes.