Funds for idiots

You've spoken about Ida's and maybe needing the cash back out to use as working capital for your business, you have also mentioned saving towards retirement.

Depending on you age and what you can spare a Pension might be worth looking at.

Are you self employed or is it a Ltd company?

Advantages and disadvantages but may be an option for some of the money.

Vanguard, for example, have ben going since the 70s I think in the US. It is the US investors that own it BTW, not investors outside US so you wouldn't be an "owner".

Even if Vanguard were not around in 20/30 years time - so what? All that would happen is Vanguard announce they are to cease trading, you sell your Vanguard funds (all they do is own shares in hundreds / thousands of companies + Bonds etc) and buy L&G or HSBC or any of the other thousands of funds on offer from other providers. In fact this is no different whether it is via a Pension or via an ISA.

If you don't think that is a long enough track record to indicate they are here for the long haul look at Investment Trusts, some of those have been around for over a 100 years.

I take your point about tying money up in a pension (can't be accessed until 55 at the moment, will probably rise to SP age - 10 years so say 57/58 at some stage), but there are significant tax advantages particularly if your Ltd company makes the contribution as an employer thus reducing taxable profits.

oz0707 wrote: »

Yes just seen ISA limit increasing. All of a sudden might not be maxing out ISA limit each year, quite a commitment!

The ISA limit isn't increasing, it's staying at £20k as per this year. It was previously just over £15k. I wouldn't expect the level to rise further in the near future.

It's certainly easy enough to have funds and shares in the same ISA with Halifax or iweb so that's not a problem.

However if you have your own business then a pension may be a better option for tax efficiency?

Vanguard LS 100 does not have Bonds, it is all Equities (but does have a UK bias).

Most people in developed markets / economies want an element of home bias as that is the currency they are earning and spending. Overseas investments introduce currency issues that can have a significant impact. If you are an investor living in, say Russia, you might want to deliberately avoid a home bias (or maybe any home exposure at all), preferring US / UK / EU / Japan etc instead.

The value of globally diversified UK investors' pots went up quite a lot post the Brexit vote but a lot of that increase was down to the relative value of £ v $ v € etc. As the £ fell the UK reported value of your investment in MSoft went up, the $ value of MSoft shares may not have changed.

Vanguard also offer a global / all world tracker as do many providers. Each will have a slightly different take on what "global" is and what an Emerging Market is.

Look at the specific breakdowns on the factsheets and/or Trustnet, Morningstar to get a feel for that.

Have a look at the Tracking Error as well, the closer to the Index return the better as matching the Index is your objective. Some will be tracking the same Index, some will track a different one so be aware when doing a direct comparison.

Worth noting that the typical global fund will be all large companies, might be worth having a smaller %'age in a Small Cap fund alongside to complement.