ISA fund selection - sector distribution?

weezie_2

I'm going to start an S&S isa this year, probably with H-L. After a bit of digging around, mainly on the iii site, I've put together a list of funds I'd be interested in investing in:

JPM New Europe Shares Acc
Invesco Perp Lat Amer
ML UK Dynamic Acc
ML UK
Fidelity Moneybuilder growth
Jupiter Global Managed
M&G International growth
Gartmore European Select Opps
Jupiter Ecology
Invesco Perp Monthly Inc+ inc

According to the iii site, the top 2 are high risk, the last one v low risk, the Ecology low risk & everything else Medium risk.
Overall I'm aiming for medium risk, looking to invest for 10-15 years at least, so I think the risky-ness spread is appropriate on the face of it.

What I'd like to be able to see is what spread across the sectors the above selection will give me (without having to collect the info from each fund & group it).
I've only got about £250 a month to put into this, so I'm guessing I'm going to have to lose upto half of them if the min I can invest is £50. (H-L min, might go with iii if it works out better for the funds I want).

Does anyone know of a site that lets you set up a dummy portfolio & see the sector spread for it so I can play around with the benefit of each fund?

Any comments on the selection? I'm completely new to this, so I'm thinking I should go mainly with UK, then 'stable' europe, then global with a little high risk geog thrown in. Does this sound a sensible first step?

turbobob

Yes if you register at www.morningstar.co.uk you can set up a dummy portfolio. If you click the "X Ray" button in your portfolio it will show its sector spread as well as other information like geographic regions.

jamesd

When you sell at HL you can split into smaller chunks than 50 if desired. What you could do is pay into one collector fund and two or four times a year sell that and split the proceeds among those you want to have smaller amounts in them.

weezie_2

Thanks for the pointers guys.

After a bit of tweaking, here's what I've currently 'got' (not bought anything yet):

Fund Name Weight %
BlackRock UK Absolute Alpha P Acc 20
Fidelity MoneyBuilder Growth 10
Gartmore Europe Selected Opps OBS 10
Invesco Perp Latin American Acc 5
Invesco Perpetual Monthly Income Plus...15
JPM New Europe Fund A Acc 5
Jupiter Ecology fund Inc 10
Jupiter Global Managed Inc 10
M&G International Growth A Acc 5
Merrill Lynch UK Dynamic £ Acc 10

... which gives me the following geographical regional breakdown:

Greater Europe 76.69
United Kingdom 40.98
Western Europe - Euro 20.42
Western Europe - Non Euro 7.61
Emerging Europe 7.39

Middle East / Africa 0.29
Americas 16.83
United States 7.11
Canada 1.72
Central & Latin America 8

Greater Asia 6.48
Japan 3.46
Australasia 1.2
Emerging 4 Tigers 1.04
Emerging Asia - Ex 4 Tigers 0.78

Not Classified 0

... and these asset allocations:

% Long % Short % Net Assets
Stock 62.68 0.33 62.34
Bond 10.26 0.02 10.25
Property 0 0 0
Cash 15.17 7.37 7.81
Other 1.48 1.88 -0.4
Not classified 0 0 20

Does this seem appropriate for an overall medium risk, longish term investment? I'm only intending to check on how things are going once or twice a year. Are any of these funds inappropriate for this level of inactivity?
Should I be aiming to have some allocation in property? If so, how do I identify this kind of fund?
Finally, something that appears to be missing from the Morningstar x-ray is an overall risk assessment (not just relative to category). Any ideas?

Has anyone any comments on this? Have I made crazy choices?

weezie_2

Can anyone help?
I know you can't give advise on individual funds etc, but does the spread & risk look reasonable for someone just starting out, willing to lose say 30% short term, for gains in the longer term? Maybe I should just stick it all in a tracker....

turbobob

Hi. I'm no expert but it looks reasonably balanced to me. I'm a bit wary of the US and very little of the poftfolio I chose is invested there. I've recently discovered the portfolio scan feature on Trustnet which I think it would be worth putting them into and comparing it against a benchmark (like the FTSE All Share Index for example). You can compare performance, volatility and so on against the benchmark.

I've recently chosen the following spread for this years ISA (rounded percentages):

Cazenove MM Diversity (14%) (Cautious Managed)
CF Ruffer European (14%) (Balanced Managed)
Jupiter European Special Situations (13%) (Europe Excluding UK)
Blackrock UK Absolute Alpha (28%) (N/A)
Neptune Balanced (14%) (Balanced Managed)
Neptune Global Equity (17%) (Global Growth)

Due to the Blackrock fund the furthest I can go back is April '06 but over that period that selection was less volatile than the index and would have achieved a better return.