All Star Manager Portfolio

SpinnerB

I'm suprised that Wombat hasn't given some wisdom here, that would really make it the thread of all threads, once again, thanks for all the information which is so generously given here you guys/girls rock :beer:

FATHEROFTWO_2

HERES A REVAMP OF MY ORIGINAL CHOICE ON PORTFOLIO.

This is the new template it is by no means a finished article but I don’t think that far off here.

I am open to suggestion as to how I could change the weightings in each sector or the choice of FUNDS.

UK EQUITY INCOME ( £10000)

Neptune Income £3000 Robin Geffin AAA citywire
Invesco Perp High Income £5000 Neil Woodford AAA citywire
Artemis Income £2000 Adrian Frost AAA citywire


UK ALL COMPANIES ( £5000)

Saracen Growth Fund Alpha £2000 Jim Fisher AAA Citywire
Old Mutual UK select Mid Cap £3000 Ashton Bradbury AAA Citywire


EUROPEAN FUNDS ( £5000)

Artemis European Growth Opps £2000 Philip Wolstencroft/Saacke AA Citywire
Neptune European Growth Opps £3000 Rob Burnett AAA Citywire


GLOBAL FUNDS (£12000)

Neptune Global Equity £3000 Robin Geffin AAA Citywire
Artemis Global Growth £3000 Peter Saacke AA Citywire
M&G Global Basics £3000 Graham French A Citywire
M&G Global Leaders £3000 Aled Smith AAA Citywire


Any suggestions about the balance between the funds ?

I have tried to balance the Neptune as My Higb Risk Emerging Market against the other Global Funds does this look right ?

I have not included an Asia or BRIC Fund due to the High Risk of the Neptune Fund does this look OK.?

It also leaves me with only a 10.5 percent Americas allocation with 6 percent of it being in the USA.

Is this too little ?

CORPORATE BONDS ( £8000) 16 percent of portfolio

Invesco Perp Corporate Bond £3000 Paull Causer/Reid A citywire
M&G Corporate Bond £3000 Richard Woolnough Non Rated
New Star Sterling Bond £2000 Philip Roantree Non Rated

HIGH YIELD BONDS ( £4000) 8 Per Cent Of Portfolio

Invesco Perp Euro High Yield Bond £2000 Neil Woodford AAA Citywire
Threadneedle High Yield Bond £2000 Barrie Whitman Non Rated

(Please Note that I have reduced the High Yield Bond to 8 per cent is this about right ?)
Does anyone have any suggestions of other Funds that might be worth researching ?

OTHER BONDS (Equity with Approx 10 percent Bond Mix) £6000

Invesco Perp Monthly Inc £3000
Artemis High Income £3000

BREAKDOWN AS FOLLOWS:

STOCK 58 PERCENT
BOND 33.61 PERCENT
CASH 5.9 PERCENT


EUROPE ( 88.5 PERCENT)

Broken down as follows

UK 57 PERCENT

Western Europe 22 PERCENT

Western Europe Non Euro 5 PERCENT

Emerging Europe 3 PERCENT

Middle East/Africa 0.14 PERCENT



AMERICAS (6.6 PERCENT)

Broken down as follows

US 6 PERCENT

Canada 0.2 PERCENT

Latin America 0.4 PERCENT



GREATER ASIA ( 5 PERCENT)

Japan 0.7 PERCENT

Australasia 0.8 PERCENT

Emerging 4 Tigers 1 PERCENT

Emerging Asia Ex 4 Tigers 2.5 PERCENT




In This Hypothetical Portfolio

I have achieved a 38 PERCENT exposure to the service sector and from that a low exposure to the financial sector of 14.29 PERCENT



INFORMATION SECTOR 13 PERCENT


MANUFACTURING SECTOR 47 PERCENT

IN MY Global Sector I have selected an emerging market high risk option of Neptune Global to compensate me for lack of tiger economies FUNDS which also combines and with sufficient US sector although I realise I am slightly underweight in the US .
I would appreciate any comments on this lack of exposure.

I also looked at the other GLOBAL FUNDS in detail and it appeared that M&G Global Basics had pulled back from being high performance but seems to recently re found its form and felt I couldn’t ignore this.

I have not thoroughly researched the BOND Funds and have only selected what on the surface seemed the best selections. any comments on different BOND FUNDS or the possibility of a Global BOND FUND would be appreciated as I have not looked at this possibility at all .

All comments are welcome I am learning as I go along here and appreciate the guidance and information many posters have said in particular about the UK allocation and Global sector.

Feel free all you experienced posters who have commented previously to say if this is better balanced or completely wrong.


Many Thanks

SpinnerB

Thanks for this fatheroftwo,

would it be possible for you to put down the risk level of each of the investments and how you calculated this or found the information out, read up about using r-squared ratios and beta values to compare funds to others etc., but where can I find 'this sector is medium risk' this fund within this sector if 'low risk'.

Thanks in anticipation that you might put this info into your portfolio list, and to yourself or anybody else who might be able to answer / point me in the right direction to the second part of the question.

Regards

SpinnerB

munk

At present global quality bond funds are weathering the credit crunch storm better than uk based corp/quality bonds at an additional risk of perhaps 2-4% or so.

The global bond funds I've been looking at recently are M&G European Corporate bond, M&G Macro bondm M&G International Sovereign bond, Newton International and Threadneedle Absolute Return bond. They've weathered the storms better than the UK bond funds you mention over the last few months but of course that's no guarantee they'll continue to do so in future.

For me they're a temporary defensive move against the affects of the credit crunch on UK based securities (along with the sure and steady BlackRock UK Absolute alpha fund - yet another fund for you to consider given it's negative correlation to most other asset classes!). When the picture looks a little better for UK equities I'll probably move back over away from the international bonds sector.

@SpinnerB - you can see the various sector analyses on trustnet:

http://www.trustnet.com/ut/funds/sectors.aspx

From that page you can go on to look at various IMA sectors that they feature where it gives you a breakdown of how the sector has performed.

Bestinvest have a volatility rating on the pages for their featured funds (goto the 'performance' tab of a fund on there) - they also include their 'MRI' rating for a lot of fund managers which gives you an idea how the manager has performed relative to their sector. Morningstar has various risk details on the 'risk and rating' tab for each fund (provided the fund has 3yrs worth of data to go on). Trustnet also have their 'RiskGrade' rating on each fund's page along with all the other stats ratios like sharpe, alpha, beta, r-squared and more.

Edit: (Added after meester's tip about ms x-ray) Also Bestinvest's portfolio planning tool will give you an overall volatility rating based on the funds you've added. Trouble is it's buggy as hell and crashes too often, shame cos it's very useful for asset allocation.

meester

SpinnerB wrote: »

Thanks for this fatheroftwo,

would it be possible for you to put down the risk level of each of the investments and how you calculated this or found the information out, read up about using r-squared ratios and beta values to compare funds to others etc., but where can I find 'this sector is medium risk' this fund within this sector if 'low risk'.

Thanks in anticipation that you might put this info into your portfolio list, and to yourself or anybody else who might be able to answer / point me in the right direction to the second part of the question.

Regards

SpinnerB

If you create a portfolio using www.morningstar.co.uk, and enter the percentages, you can then do an 'x-ray' of the portfolio. This analyses the risk, sectors (small/large, geographical), and more stuff.

On the risk level of fund, if you look at the fund page on trustnet it will show various numbers and these indicate the volatility. Also generally the more developing the economy or narrow the focus (such as resources), the higher the risk. Smaller companies are generally considered higher risk.

FATHEROFTWO_2

Thanks MUNK I will have a look at the Global Bonds.

Re the Bestinvest site I cant seem to remove their choices for my portfolio and replace them with my own.This would enable me to ascertain overall volatility and risk any thoughts on how to remedy ?

I used the XRAY on morningstar to get the spread but id doesnt give the overal risk.Any ideas from anyone of a better site to enter details into for comparison purposes?

I would really appreciate some opinions from some long standing members such as dunstonh jamesd, edinvestor and the endless list of other long standing members on my risk allocation,choice and any other thoughts or comments on my portfolio in general ?

ie does it sound reasoned and balanced or would they choose other funds ?

many thanks

munk

FATHEROFTWO wrote: »

Re the Bestinvest site I cant seem to remove their choices for my portfolio and replace them with my own.This would enable me to ascertain overall volatility and risk any thoughts on how to remedy ?

To remove a fund from the portfolio click on the 'purple circle with a white line through the middle (minus sign)' icon to the left of the fund you want to remove. The other icon to the left of the funds in your list (the white 'e' on a blue background) is used to update the portfolio stats if you change a fund's holding value (by entering a new £ figure in the text box to the right of the fund in the list).

That tool is brilliant except for the fact it almost always crashes eventually - maybe 9/10 times? - if you remove more than one or two funds from the listing and add others back in... either you just get the message 'ERROR:' on the page, or the weightings values all disappear apart from a single '%'. When that happens all you can do is quit the portfolio you're working on and start over again, very frustrating. Have contacted their web support about it but with no luck.

Bestinvest were talking about a new planning tool being made live, but that was nearly 6 months ago now and still nothing new Real shame because when it works properly there's nothing else like it free online.

I used the XRAY on morningstar to get the spread but id doesnt give the overal risk.Any ideas from anyone of a better site to enter details into for comparison purposes?

Bestinvest is the only one that I know of that shows you overall volatility that is free. If you had the time and the inclination you could set up your own tool in a spreadsheet. I started on this but updating the dataset for each and every fund is ridiculously time consuming.

purch

I will have a look at the Global Bonds

Unless I was looking to lose some of my capital I wouldn't be putting any 'new' money into a Bond Fund at present.

jamesd

For your described risk level that looks reasonable enough. Heed purch's guidance and consider something like Blackrock UK Absolute Alpha instead of some of the bond holding value. By heed I mean "I think you''d be wise to listen at least to the point of halving your exposure".

It wouldn't fit my risk profile but that's speculative with an actual 20% variation between high and low for the non-cash portion over the last 12 months, 3-5% of the downside of that due to breaking my own tentative guidelines at one point. And as much again to not paying sufficient attention to purch and some others early in 2007, which could have prompted me to do more, sooner, about my ignorance of commodities.

FATHEROFTWO_2

Jamesd

By coincidence I received a book from Hargreaves lansdown this morning and
Blackrock UK absolute alpha is recommended as a core holding in any
portfolio
"to position more adventurous funds"

"Cautious investors who are nervous about markets but want to keep a foot in both camps"

"Pension investors approaching retirement" "to downgrade risk"

Also I tried the Bestinvest portfolio and got about half way through and it crashed.
I will try again later but it gave me a comparison to the Ftse allshare risk rating .