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Got an AJBell one, need to open another.
Had a quick look at HargreavesL and the fees looked quite high.
Anyone got any recommendations?
Cheers
What do you need from it? Do you want to invest in individual stocks or any specific funds etc...?
Why do you need another one? You can just carry on paying into the one you've got up to the max 20k pa (but only pay into one each year). The Isa is just the wrapper for the fujds/shares you've invested in so you can choose different investments this year as long as aj bell support them with their Isa.
Vanguard is pretty decent. They have a range of fund options with ok fees. Just their own products but they seem to do ok
Depends what you invest in - market trackers…? Likely Vanguard. If you select investments HL is expensive for unit trusts but cheaper for direct shares.
Why do you need another one?
Erm, eggs and baskets.
What do you need from it? Do you want to invest in individual stocks or any specific funds etc…?
Was thinking of shares and funds, but I guess I could do the shares in the one I already have...
Will have a look at Vanguard. If nothing else it'll stop me gambling and buying dross like Cineworld, Amigo, INTU etc
Another vote for Vanguard, I also have one with Moneybox.
I have HL ISA and Vanguard general savings. Both platforms seem ok to me.
HL have just dropped the £1.50 fee** per stock to £zero on the regular DD savings, money taken 7-8th month and invested 10th-12th. **ftse100-250 stocks.
also dividend reinvestments are free (used to be a £1.50 fee)
£13 a trade, or £9 in following month if you make 12+ trades in calendar month.
cheaper options out their, but you don't always get the bid-offer spread, as with HL the trade is instant.
On the really cheaper options i looked at, you are effectively placing an order at best, they may bulk orders togeather and hence you arent buying for the price at the time of order placement. ie you place order 9am, it'll likely be dealth in a few mins, butit could be dealt at 3pm that day, the price has moved.
the HL app has got better in the last year, more functionality, although its lost the broker recommendations info that it had a few years ago.
ps. i laways thought stocks and shares were ring fenced in client accounts,
hence you are covered. a quick google.
What happens to my ISA if the company goes bust?
If you hold a fund and the fund manager goes bust, then the underlying assets are protected. The stocks owned by that fund are held separately by a trustee or a depositary, so if the fund manager goes under, the investments in the fund remain
Daft related question. I want to move my employer shares (share save & match) into an ISA to protect the dividend yields from tax which I want to take as income when I retire. Is it a case of selling them in/from computershare/equateplus and then rebuying them in the new S&S ISA? ta.
Invest engine if you don't mind restricting yourself to ETF's. Its free.
ps. i laways thought stocks and shares were ring fenced in client accounts,
hence you are covered. a quick google.What happens to my ISA if the company goes bust?
If you hold a fund and the fund manager goes bust, then the underlying assets are protected. The stocks owned by that fund are held separately by a trustee or a depositary, so if the fund manager goes under, the investments in the fund remain
This is the thread I opened on that a while ago. The upshot of it is me now opening a separate ISA on the basis that it protects me slightly more. (Though the the outcome of that thread was clear as mud.)
https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/do-i-need-to-consider-fscs-limits-for-my-shares-isa/
Looked 8nto Vanguard. Saw this page...
https://flic.kr/p/2ouHFM2
Looks good. Really like the bit about no hidden fees
No hidden charges
No charge to buy or sell funds, or make payments
Then see this bit...
Ah so there are no charges to buy or sell funds, but there are to hold them. But Vanguard don't put that on the main page.
I recall someone saying anything approaching .5% was too much on a pension, so presume the same applies here.
Wasn't the recieved wisdom that trackers are generally better than charged for managed funds.
So where can I get some low cost trackers in an ISA?
I wouldn't call that a "hidden fee". All funds have some kind of fee and they are different for each fund. I think Vanguard have some around 0.1% which is about as low as they get, and TBH your fund should be making a reasonable return that renders these figures pretty moot. My Fundsmith has a higher fee but its up around 80% so I'll live with that.
Interactive Investor is a great platform with low fees, although it’s a flat monthly charge which makes it much cheaper in relative terms if you have a higher amount invested. Vanguard is cheaper for anything up to about £40,000 or so I think. But the advantage of II is you can access the whole market, including Vanguard. So bizarrely if for instance you have a Vanguard Pension, provided it’s worth a reasonable amount you can invest it into a Vanguard Target Retirement fund for less than it costs to invest directly with Vanguard if you do it through II.
Since changing from vanguard to II I have (early days yet) managed to beat the returns I’m getting on Vanguard by about 2% in 4 months, just by investing in worldwide and US tracker funds from a variety of sources like HSBC, Vanguard, Fidelity, Aviva, Royal London and Polar Capital.
looking at vanguard, as i thought
https://support.vanguard.com/tutorials/buy-etf-or-stock
you aren't buying the stock instantly. it goes into the queue and stays at pending till executed.
I'll pay the higher fee to get the actual quote there and then and 'place deal'
Stoopid question, please could you confirm the ii website url?
Just to be sure I'm not going mad
I've been using Halifax for a while. When I opened the account it was very cheap for regular investments.
Early days yet but my self chosen Pension funds are out-performing my Scottish Widows workplace pension and my Vanguard 80% Lifestrategy fund by more than 2% in 5 months. It does get a bit obsessive checking every day though…
I would move my ISA too but the monthly fees work out a bit higher until it’s worth a bit more.
Ta.
Weirdly enough when I tried to register it said I already was. Very very weird until I phoned customer service and they told me they had taken over an old trading account of mine from RBS 17 years ago.
An account I was trying to forget about as I lost absolutely everything on one shit trade :')
Oh well, inauspicious start is not necessarily an augur
Better luck this time! I’m still trying to decide whether to open a combined SIPP and Trading account and start buying some random stocks - my pension I’ve just gone with various global and US tracker funds as I’m too clueless to go spending too much on specific shares. Would only in effect cost £40 extra per year but I might end up tinkering too much and wasting my money…
Trading 212
Pretty much fee free compared to HL and AJ Bell..
I've found it quite easy to make money on there compared to AJ Bell where you need to drop seven or eight hundred per trade (stocks) to make it worthwhile.
That sounds a good shout. Might move my ISA there.
Given the new 2024 ISA rules that allow you to have 2 ISAs of the same type in a tax year, has anyone got a current recommendation for a 2nd S&S ISA to go alongside my Vanguard one?
I want to spread the risk across 2 and if the 2nd outperforms the Vanguard I want to be able to transfer to it but not affect this year's contributions.
"Why do you need another one? You can just carry on paying into the one you’ve got up to the max 20k pa (but only pay into one each year). "
In the eggs and baskets question I suppose if ISA funds have the same £85k investor protection limit that banks have then splitting ISAs between different places wouldn't do any harm if your total funds were bigger than £85k.
Have a look on Fidelity?
Sorry for he hijack - can I transfer more than one old ISAs into a current one without losing my £20k allowance for the year?
Thanks
2 cheapest platforms I’m aware of are Trading212 and InvestEngine. Both are really good, I went with the latter as too confused by the endless share options on 212.
How are you getting on Invest Engine?
It looks good
I really like InvestEngine. Lots of fairly simple ETFs - I mostly use Tracker funds that follow the big indexes but you can also for instance get trackers on valuable metal prices, my Ishares Physical Gold is the best performing fund so far.
I don’t consider myself knowledgeable enough to buy shares from individual companies.
Charges are virtually zero, there is really good info on there showing graphs of performance over time both for your overall fund and the individual parts of it.
Possibly one thing I can think of where Trading 212 wins is interest on cash, but I don’t really keep cash in there anyway.
Customer service has been excellent when I’ve asked the odd question here and there too.
What is the risk in using these smaller platforms?
Why would there be a risk? Money is protected by the usual regs, and they’re really just a platform for investing in the market so not really much of a risk of them going under, they’re not controlling large amounts of money themselves like for instance an actively managed fund like the famous ones that have failed over the years eg Neil Woodford.
You’re simply using it to manage investments, the money itself is being invested in the usual big companies (Ishares, Vanguard, HSBC, Invesco, L&G etc). Even if the company running the platform went bust, you’d still own the investments and worst case scenario would have to manage them on a different platform. The provider has no rights to use your invested money themselves.
Equally as far as I understand it, the FSCS compensation limit of £85,000 would apply to each of the companies that you are investing money in - so I guess if you were feeling paranoid with larger investments you’d spread them out so you didn’t have more than £85,000 with any single investment company, or more than £85,000 in cash with the platform provider.
Jumping in too so apologies! Can anyone recommend me a stocks and shares ISA as an invest and forgetish... Have been looking at Vanguard lifestrategy 60/40 performance is mediocre and not impressed being so UK exposed. Ta!
If you’re looking to Invest and forget then I’m not sure you can do much better than Vanguard. Despite being ‘higher risk’ their 100% equity funds have performed much better than the 80 or 60% ones.
Let’s differentiate between platform company and fund company. I hold “buy and forget “ Vanguard trackers on trading 212, without paying Vanguard the 0.15% platform fee.
I have put some money into a pension for my kids, to forget about until they can access it, which will probably be when they are 60 at this rate…maybe even older. Vanguard 100% equities. It’s got 40 odd years to grow.
As dantsw13 says, it’s possible to hold Vanguard funds through other platforms and avoid the (admittedly fairly low) platform fees that they charge if you hold them directly. With the added advantage of being able to choose from loads of other funds as well.
InvestEngine, Trading 212 and Interactive Investor all give you this option, although with II you need a decent fund size before it ends up cheaper.
Cheers both. Essentially i just want to invest my full 2024 isa allowance into a S&S invest and forget tracker fund. Tbh i don't mind on the platform but had already started looking at Vanguard Lifestrategy funds, is/are there any others to consider? Thanks
Trading 212 sounds too good to be true, you can can vanguard funds but with zero fees?
How does that work and where do they make there money from then?
Don't listen to footflaps... When I asked he recommended SMT and was down about 40%... Back up to 8% down!🤪 😉
Royal London Sustainable has been doing good.... About 40% up in 16 months.
Most of my best funds on II SIPP are Royal London funds. Slightly higher fees but very consistent performance.
Ref other platforms - no it’s not too good to be true. Trading 212 make their money from currency conversion fees (most of us are going to be investing in US funds / shares) and also in other trading methods like contract for difference trading.
InvestEngine charge virtually nothing if you self manage your ISA but do have managed portfolios and SIPP platforms which are charged.
@jim25 - there is no fee for the platform but each individual ETF has a management fee regardless of where you invest. So if Vanguard ABC fund has a 0.15% fee then you pay that however you access it
“If you’re looking to Invest and forget then I’m not sure you can do much better than Vanguard. Despite being ‘higher risk’ their 100% equity funds have performed much better than the 80 or 60% ones“
100% equities *should* perform better than a blended fund, as they have higher concentration of growth assets. Volatility would expected to be higher.
the “once in a generation” bond rout of 2022 did hammer a lot of 60:40 funds that people thought would be more stable than a 100% equity fund, however.
returns from bonds are now higher than before 2022, so have become an investable asset for alot of people again.
True although if you look back historically even without the Covid years when bonds bombed, the higher equity funds perform better almost every year.
If you take the maximum recording period available on the Vanguard website, £10,000 invested in 2011 would be about 23500 with 60% LifeStrategy, or £34,000 with 100%.
El Shalimo: no - you don’t pay the Vanguard Account fee if you access their funds elsewhere. You only pay the fund management fee which from memory is 0.22%.
Using Interactive Investor for my pension I pay £12.99 per month account fee, which works out as 0.04% at the moment. With Vanguard the account fee is capped at £375 per year so using Interactive Investor saves me just over £200 per year in account fees.
My S&S ISa is a new thing for me, with only £2k in it. That’s nowhere near enough money to make Interactive Investors flatfee worthwhile, hence using T212 for that. We did transfer my wife’s previous workplace pension there though, as that’s all just leave alone & hold and the flat fee is a very good deal at her pot level.
I am considering a partial transfer out of my pension to II, as they are one of the few platforms with direct access to Bonds and Gilts, rather than the more volatile funds.
SIPP fees across all platforms tend to be higher than ISAs.
Same reason I’m not using II for my ISA - the flat rate only becomes worthwhile if you have lots of money in it. InvestEngine and Trading 212 definitely win there.
InvestEngine do a SIPP now with similar fees to II but there is a much smaller range of funds available.
I’m lucky my workplace pension (Aviva) has a SIPP option with a much bigger choice of funds than the standard workplace scheme. Because we have 40,000+ employees, our platform charge is low at 0.1%, and some funds get big discounts too, so my US fund costs a total AMC of 0.1% . I’m approaching my last 10 years and feel that tradeable bond funds are just too volatile, so will be transferring 25% to II for individual bonds and gilts. I think I’ll probably use II for my drawdown too, unless something better has come along by then.
My mortgage pays off in 10 years so that money will be redirected into the ISA with T212.
So to summarise, he agrees with us! InvestEngine if you’re happy with ETFs (I am), Trading 212 if you want to buy specific company shares.
If you're dealing with thousands rather than hundreds, then I would be very wary of using trading 212 (or any other commission free broker). They are notorious for offering awful spreads. A thorough read of their 'order execution policy' would be well worth your while before giving them any money:
For Share and ETF transactions, where the size and nature of the Order permit it, T212 will
execute the Order via its Systematic Internaliser in the first instance. Following this priority of
venues, ensures that the price given to you will, in most cases, be at least as good as the
best Bid/Ask price of the primary exchange upon which the instrument is listed.
Bottom line is that your trades are not actually being forwarded to a registered exchange (as they would with a fee charging broker) you are trading within their own little made up world - the 'Systematic Internaliser'. The reason that sounds dodgy is because it is...
If the price is as same or better than the price listed on the exchange, why is this a problem?
InvestEngine for instance are currently not making a profit, so they’re not doing some dodgy maths and making a mint.
Also they are regulated by the FSA like all other financial institutions - you can’t get away with doing anything dodgy.
I’d certainly prefer managing my own investments for a pittance than giving money away to an IFA…
It's a problem because most trades go through inside the bid/ask. If they're not dealing on an exchange, then they're not getting quotes from other market participants, and so they're not getting the best executions. You will notice in the above document that 'best execution' does not equal 'best fill'. You will also notice points 12 and 13 - they are responsible for monitoring their own executions, but there doesn't seem to very much in the way of detail as to what procedures they have in place...
I'm all for managing your own investments - I do it for a living. I actually spend quite a lot of time watching people's crappy fills from commission free brokers on the order book of various stocks. If you have a decent pot, then I would recommend you manage it through a traditional broker. I use II and IG personally.
I use II too as well as InvestEngine but I’m not quite sure how they’re different? As far as I can see Trading 212 are just using software to calculate what price to sell you stock at, before placing the actual order. I don’t think it’s some underhand way of secretly making more money out of the trade but I might be wrong.
When placing orders on InvestEngine I can see the current price, the actual price will be slightly different depending on when the order is executed but I don’t think anything strange is going on. Equally with II the free investing is on the same day each month and you may do better or worse depending on what the market is doing at that particular time.
Is Trading 212 doing something more underhand than the other platforms? I must admit I avoided using it because it seemed more complicated than what I was looking for.
Looking at IG.com I’m immediately put off by them promoting CFD trading, which for most is far too much of a gamble to be worthwhile, and in my view a significant reason why stock markets are so volatile with so many idiots gambling on ultra short term gains and losses.
“ Is Trading 212 doing something more underhand than the other platforms? I must admit I avoided using it because it seemed more complicated than what I was looking for.”
it has to make money somehow. By offering a “free” (it’s not) trading service it generates revenue in a less transparent manner.
somewhere, you pay for a platform. The key is to choose one that is cheapest for your portfolio size / construction / investing style.
Yep - I was under the impression that Trading 212 make money by charging foreign exchange fees.
InvestEngine presumably rely on the booth people opting for their managed options and the new SIPP, both of which have fees.
T212 has a CFD arm which is where it makes money.
InvestEngine is making a loss in return for market share in its early years. No doubt charges will rise.
That I get and have no issue with. Trading 212 taking money off people by stealth seems extremely unlikely.
Re: £85k safety net - I would imagine a company like Vanguard is too big to fail but it's not impossible
Yep that I guess is an advantage to using a platform and choosing a variety of funds. I only have more than that with one company, and to lose a lot, several of Vanguard, HSBC, Aviva, L&G, Ishares, Royal London, Fidelity and Schroder would have to go under, at which point presumably the apocalypse would be happening anyway…
It’s perhaps worth mentioning that the shares you buy through any modern platform are not actually held directly in your name. That all went out the window many years ago (though you may find elderly relatives holding on to the old paper-based system with share certificates).
It’s all dematerialised into nominee accounts these days. Whether they are quite so safe from fraud and financial malpractice is not entirely clear to me but I’m not aware of any failures.
I think the regulations are pretty strict in terms of them having no right to use the money you invest, even if they get into financial difficulties.
The strange thing about modern society is that much of what forms the basis of modern life, wealth etc is a construct that we have invented, but much of it, especially money and wealth, doesn’t actually exist other than as a concept we all agree to believe in.
Re: £85k safety net – I would imagine a company like Vanguard is too big to fail but it’s not impossible
I think someone here explained that in the event that Vanguard went bust you would still hold the stocks from your funds?
I think the suggestion earlier was that if a platform went bust then you would still own your funds, wherever they were invested, and you would then presumably need to access an alternative platform to manage them.
If the company itself went bust - eg Vanguard, HSBC or whichever - then the FCSC would kick in and you’d be covered for £85,000 maximum. Therefore if all your funds are with Vanguard, or indeed any single company, and are worth more than this, there is a risk albeit small with such a big company.
And even if Vanguard went bust the shares will actually be held by a separate custodian company, I think. It is a multi layered system which ensures against shares going missing. Put another way, Lehmans going bust in the GFC was a very big thing for share trading and even if values of shares fell a long way, no one actually found they didn’t own shares they had thought they owned beforehand.
My point is that you *never* own the shares yourself, not even at the start. In the good old days you actually had a piece of paper saying you owned X shares, and there was a register where your name was listed as the owner of X shares. It all took time and money to maintain and update. Now you get a computer printout listing the shares that are held on your behalf by a nominee.
I'm sure there is regulation, the issue probably is how watertight they are and how easily broken. I'm not particularly worried, just curious.
So after spending most of last night and most of today I think I've made a decision, bailed from Vanguard Lifestrategy for being too UK centric and going to punt on either FTSE All-World UCITS ETF (VWRP) or the FTSE Global All Cap Index Fund (VAFTGAG) both the accumulation versions as I want growth not income. Looking on Trustnet they appear to track pretty similar, does anyone here hold either? Ta.
perhaps worth mentioning that the shares you buy through any modern platform are not actually held directly in your name. That all went out the window many years ago (though you may find elderly relatives holding on to the old paper-based system with share certificates).
It’s all dematerialised into nominee accounts these days. Whether they are quite so safe from fraud and financial malpractice is not entirely clear to me but I’m not aware of any failures.
Well said. Despite the assertions from various people in the thread, I am not convinced that you do actually own the shares. Funnily enough, the OP of this thread also opened a thread dedicated to that very question. 😉 And I think it was the answer to that thread ( in the negative) that prompted him to open this thread to ask where to start moving his savings above £85k into
Lemme do a search...
Here you go..
https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/do-i-need-to-consider-fscs-limits-for-my-shares-isa/How weird is that for people to be asking a question on this thread that was actually answered by the Genesis of this actual thread.... What a mind ****..
PS, anyone else stupid enough to buy Docs after the recent tumble? I was watching them fur ages at 90p, then pounced when they went sub 70
I’ve got the Vanguard Developed World ex-UK fund in my SIPP which is another decent Vanguard global tracker. Seems to have slightly better long term performance than the one you mentioned although I wouldn’t claim to know what exactly the difference is.
Time in the market v timing the market.
That’s what I’m relying on rather than trying to find a wise pick.
Time in the market v timing the market.
That’s what I’m relying on rather than trying to find a wise pick.
It's a valid point. It's easy to get hung up on which fund is the very best, comparing UK and US and far east, etc, which platform to use. It's makes it seem complicated and maybe puts people off. Buy something sensible, hold on to it, buy some more occasionally. A lot better than doing nothing.