Investment portfolio

[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

[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!

[Jeebo72]

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

[Andy2]

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

you mean stick it all on Black horse ?

[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.