Pension fund value

flopsy1973 wrote: »

So what type of funds are you invested in if you consider these not high risk. ?
I am willing to take some risk with this so are there better funds within the standard life range that would be more suitable

As it happens i have an SL pension. Whether my funds are suitable for you, I dont know.
They are (with % of overall total of pension in brackets)

SL Vanguard FTSE Developed World ex UK Pension Fd 34%
Standard Life Overseas Tracker Pension Fund 34%
SL Vanguard SRI Global Stock Pension Fund 22%
SL iShares Global Property Securities 10%

The first two are very similar and any of them would do, when choosing i couldn't decide so rather than procrastinate i went 50/50. Note this means i have 68% fully outside the UK so a lot of exposure to currency swings.

As someone said the variability on these is high, they are 100% equities.
Looking at the performance of the first one for example, tracking backwards from year to March 2018, year to March 2017 and so on its been
0.3
32.3
-1.6
21.2
6.8

So, looking at the most recent, 0.3%, eg static, thats worse than your overall return you started complaining about ! However i wouldn't mind betting its chnage substantially since end March as well ... yep its up 6% since then.

In my other main pension, a SIPP, same size as the SL one, i have really high risk stuff stuff like shares in a Chinese battery and electric car company, a biotech fund , company shares such as Apple, funds including Fundsmith, Scottish Mortgage, some EFTs, Persimmon. A real rag bag of stuff that would give Dunston palpitations.

I wouldn't advise the latter for anyone, its what i ended up with after 20+ years of messing about and it worked for me, though with hindsight if i'd just bought Coca Cola and held I'd have done as well or better

I am gradually rationalising it to more funds/EFTs and fewer company shares but some of those are out and out pure gambles I'll stick with

I wouldn't advise the SL stuff either, that's my choice as a high risk taking individual, it is high risk purely because its 100% equities with low UK exposure, and whilst you say you want high risk, if you complain about the funds only going up 3 or 4% what are you going to do if it drops 30%? !:eek:

The property fund has been a dog the past few years, whilst every dog has its day i may be taking this one round the back of the woodshed sometime. Though for a 15 year hold you mention I'm sure it will come good some day and I'd keep.

The point about my first 3 funds in SL is they are all low cost index trackers. None of this fancy dan "recovery" or high income (which i still think doesn't fit in a growth portfolio) or global basics (whatever that is) which all no doubt come with high management fees. Low cost trackers. Fire and forget. And they are up about 9% since March. But they fell before that and are just above where they were start of the year, about 2% up. (I only know all this because i've just looked, i rarely look at what they are doing as it would just make me fiddle with them)

So thats my "simple" high risk SL portfolio which is the answer to your Q. And as i say performance of the first two funds is indistinguishable, flip a coin if you want that type of investment.

" i have 68% fully outside the UK.."

"...with low UK exposure..."

I guess, given UK stock market is about 6% of the global, some may say that is high UK exposure..

B

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Perhaps i didn't explain well enough. Or, you jumped to the wrong conclusion. Or both.
68% of the funds are fully outside.
The other main fund, which is 22% of the pension, has the UK at the global figure, eg 6% or so (ie its not an arbitrary UK element, say 25% like Vanguard)

Thus overall that pension is about 4-5% UK.

So yes, pretty low by most standards!

Thanks.yes I saw the 'fully' as I posted, but, as someone who is wrestling with the 'international diversification versus reliable income' dilema, i was interested to see your UK percentage.

B

AnotherJoe wrote: »

What is that dilemma? Do you mean that U.K. funds provide more dividends than international? Could you mitigate that by using international income funds ? Or just selling from growth funds? Seems to me if there's a crash if some sort dividends will fall anyway so it's ot necessarily that reliable.

I was meaning exchange rate fluctuations adding an additional volatility to international income. (Although I guess the big UK divi payers are affe ted by this anyway....)