Reply to: Investment portfolio

[IR35 Avoider]

The cheapest trackers available in the UK are from Vanguard, who entered the UK market last year.

Vanguard is an American fund manager that is owned by its investors (i.e. no-one else profits from managing your money) and essentially invented index tracking funds in the seventies.

The founder of Vanguard, John Bogle, has written a number of investing books for beginners. One of his sayings is that in investing, you get what you don't pay for. i.e. no-one is capable of adding value by picking shares, so anything you pay to fund managers or financial advisors in this regard will only reduce your returns, in proportion to what you paid. He also proves that it must by definition be true that the average investor dollar (pound) invested in shares must under-perform a share tracker fund. (The argument does rely on tracker funds being cheaper than the alternatives.)

If you don't have 100K to invest, then Vanguard funds are currently only accessible via Alliance Trust Savings. (You can have a shares ISA or SIPP with them.)

As far as I know, Alliance Trust Savings are the only ISA and SIPP provider who rebate all trail commission, in addition to all initial comission. (Some providers rebate all initial commission, but it is more important to get all trail comission discounted.) Having said that, Vanguard don't pay comission anyway.

Optimum combination of equity funds for a UK investor is probably 50% UK index tracker plus 50% rest of the world tracker.

At the moment I like certain property funds. UKCM and FCPT are high on my list of favourites. IPT and IRP are smaller property funds I also like.

At current prices I expect shares to return a little over 4% real on average over the long term, and property a little over 5% real. "Real" means over and above inflation.

[Andy2]

Stick every penny you have on Llyods TSB ... you can thank me later.

you mean stick it all on Black horse ?

[Jeebo72]

Stick every penny you have on Llyods TSB ... you can thank me later.

[NeverBeenNorthOfTheM25]

Hi All,

Okay so after yesterdays post on pension, I now want to start squirelling money away.

I was wondering if you have any good tips for investment products.

I am of course going to max out the cash ISA allowance but what else. I need to invest more.

Should I also max the shares portion of the ISA, and what is the best way to do this (at low risk to start) through trackers etc.

Also with regards to property, is this a good investment for the long run (20 years). I keep hearing conflicting stories, and one analyst yesterday suggested that property will fall to 50% of its current value over the next 5-10 years.

What is the boards view.

And Thanks to those who answer.

When in doubt, stick it all on Black!

[BlackenedBiker]

Just a quick update on this as well.

I got the financial times guide to investing and I would recommend to anyone who can invest some time in learning the system. This book will give you all the information that you need and no bs.....

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Financial-Ti...4493529&sr=8-1

[DieScum]

Yeah, ISA is a good tax wrapper. No CGT but still 10% on dividends.

Think the limit has gone up to 10k this year so you can get a good chunk in there.

My ISA has earned more than me this week.

You don't want to know how much it lost in 2008 though. Still clawing that back.

[BlackenedBiker]

I'd max out your share isas. If you have no short term need for the money I wouldn't bother with the cash part.

Either go for the lowest fee FTSE 100 tracker or roll your own.

I went on to the motley fool site when I was about 23 and asked for some advice on starting off investing. I think I had all of about 3 grand to put away!

The general advice given was stick it in a tracker. To be honest looking back it was bad advice. I would have been better taking more risk going for individual shares.

As it stood the tracker went up a bit but because there was so little in it, and my income has subsequently grown lots, that it was hardly worth it.

Looking back it would have been better to do proper investing in hand picked and researched shares. Even I'd lost the lot it was a small amount and you learn a lot from the investment process.

Now I pick my own shares for my portfolio with all the associated ups and downs - especially in 2008! It's an interesting hobby. Makes you take an interest in some weird and wonderful things. It's always nice to know that maybe this time next year I'll be a millionaire if a few boats come in.

Thanks for the advice I will take it on board.

Can I chose my own share portfolio and wrap it up in an ISA wrapper, thus wreaping the rewards of interest free saving????

[DieScum]

I'd max out your share isas. If you have no short term need for the money I wouldn't bother with the cash part.

Either go for the lowest fee FTSE 100 tracker or roll your own.

I went on to the motley fool site when I was about 23 and asked for some advice on starting off investing. I think I had all of about 3 grand to put away!

The general advice given was stick it in a tracker. To be honest looking back it was bad advice. I would have been better taking more risk going for individual shares.

As it stood the tracker went up a bit but because there was so little in it, and my income has subsequently grown lots, that it was hardly worth it.

Looking back it would have been better to do proper investing in hand picked and researched shares. Even I'd lost the lot it was a small amount and you learn a lot from the investment process.

Now I pick my own shares for my portfolio with all the associated ups and downs - especially in 2008! It's an interesting hobby. Makes you take an interest in some weird and wonderful things. It's always nice to know that maybe this time next year I'll be a millionaire if a few boats come in.

[rootsnall]

knowledge is power:

So I have just bought this.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Financial-Ti...3291905&sr=1-1

I think you should of started here, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Investing-On...3298969&sr=1-1

[BlackenedBiker]

knowledge is power:

So I have just bought this.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Financial-Ti...3291905&sr=1-1

[Scary]

And nobody really knows what's going to happen, not even the experts (especially the experts).

[MPwannadecentincome]

Okay it seems I might need financial advice.

I have been reading the money pages and Motley Fool but I am no expert.

In terms of Financial Advice I would like it from someone who is an expert and not a glorified salesman who will be hell bent on just pedalling his products.

I would like to buy their advice on a no sell/no commission basis. Is this a good idea and if so is it possible and where would I find this advisor.

I've never heard of anyone operating like this. You can pay for advise by the hour from an independant financial advisor.

But anything you invest in is a risk. Depends how much you have to invest, put different proportions of it into lower, medium and high risk things, over the long term the higher risk things should pay off but these days long term means 20 years plus - it used to mean 10 years plus.

Good luck

[MPwannadecentincome]

Hows about this -combine the following

salt shortage
Gold is expensive
looming water shortages

Invest in SEAWATER.

It contains lots of salt for snowy conditions and for fish and chips, 6kg of gold per cubic kilometer, and it contains loads of water as well.

Wow I didn't realise there was gold in seawater so do they separate out the gold when they make salt in the middle east?

Invest in Desalination plants in Africa and the middle east, powered by solar concentrators (see last week's Sunday Times business section for news on innovation in solar concentrators as deployed in Andalucia, Spain).

Each desalination plant could be set up to heat the water, use the steam to drive a turbine to generate some leccy which could be used to split some water into Hyrdogen and Oxygen and the rest of the distilled water can be used to supply the local region.

So the products are:

Salt
Distilled water
Hydrogen
Oxygen
Gold

and as a benefit the CO2 emissions would be decreased through consumption of the Hydrogen in suitably powered vehicles.


And what you have left is lots of salt and some bits of gold

[BlasterBates]

I wonder about weather derivatives. At the moment everyone is assuming the globe is warming, but I think not; hmm might try this myself.

[AtW]

Okay so after yesterdays post on pension, I now want to start squirelling money away.

Word of advice: don't be like red squirrels who put all nuts into one place - be more like superior grey squirrels who use scatter hoarding approach AKA diversification.

HTH