At least 3 people in your last thread, 4 days ago, advised you to read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Have you done that already?

I would read Smarter Investing before you read The Intelligent Investor, as it's more up to date. I absolutely love The Intelligent Investor - it really speaks to me - but it has slightly dated language and predates index funds (so it's not actually the best guide for most people).

IMO /r/UKPersonalFinance would be a more suitable sub for you than this one.

I could be wrong but the "trading allowance" is meant for sole traders. Like if you earned £500 from dog walking. It has nothing to do with trading shares.

https://www.freeagent.com/glossary/trading-allowance/#:~:text=The%20trading%20allowance%20is%20an,tax%20on%20your%20business%20income.

I don't like Guides - as most of them are biased or tilted towards their own skewed opinions of what delivers the most returns.

I would strongly recommend reading this book: The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Books. Big Profits)

It will explain everything - and what contributes the most to your returns over the years.

Have you compared this with their earnings, though?

Amazon, for example, have a price-earings ratio of 186. That means that you have to invest £186 for every £1 of earnings you want to make from the company.

If you want to earn £1 of dividends, why wouldn't you just buy a stock with a PE of 15 or 20 - i.e. allowing you to pay only £15 or £20 for the same revenue?

Looking at your comment history, in which you say you've previously lost 80% of a £15,000 stake speculating on AIM, I fear you have a gambling problem rather than an interest in investing.

I think you should read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em> as your first stop, but if you must reject index funds then read Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor next. I like the editions with Zweig's commentary.

If you take the interest-only mortgage and put £509 per month into an index fund then you're making a leveraged investment, in the two sets of assets, of £968 a month.

Leveraging increases both the returns (well, the potential or theoretical returns) and the risk.

I'm not really that bright, mortgages and interest rates aren't really my thing, and it's a beautiful sunny morning here and I don't really feel awake. I'm not going to run the numbers for you, because I can't be bothered and I'd only fuck it up.

But you're only showing the upside figures you've calculated, not what happens if you lose your job during a housing crash.

What if there's a stockmarket crash with one of these really slow decades-long recoveries? You could be forced to sell when both the housing market and stocks are down. What if interest rates go mental? Inflation has been 10% more than once in my lifetime.

There are all sorts of things that could happen over a period of 30 years - that is such a long period it's impossible to predict. We'll probably be actually starting to respond to climate change then, governments panicking to do so - that could mean a massive house-building campaign and the condemnation of properties not carbon neutral.

It might be worth reading the bonds section of Ilmanen (free version on Kindle, Kindle app or Amazon web reader) for his explanation of how long-term interest-rate risk must be compensated for.

You have increased your returns, but you have also increased your risk - have you increased your risk-adjusted returns? I don't know, but I bet you don't, either.

IMO you're best to get a mortgage you can overpay on. Buying a house is usually about security, not gambling.

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

It's already been done. A whole sequencing lab was packed into suitacases for tracking Ebola in Sierra Leone, see from slide 27 in this presentation. Followed with lab in a van to track Zika in Brazil.

Myself and tens of people I know swear by the Monzo card.

The bill splitting, money sending, budgeting, notifications and other app features are great but the killer feature for me is that their card is the cheapest way to spend money abroad.

Their tech approach is strong - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkOY7DgXKyw

and the features on their product roadmap look really useful - https://trello.com/b/9tcaMB4w/monzo-transparent-product-roadmap

It's a startup - it's a complete punt. I'm pledging money more in hope that they can become a full-blown bank and distrupt the market, rather than investing to make a return.

They won't have ETF's either. At least at launch.

https://robinhood.com/gb/en/support/articles/general-questions/

Also they are not FCA approved for options yet. https://register.fca.org.uk/ShPo_FirmDetailsPage?id=0010X00004H8km8QAB

Portfolio management is about allocating to your allocation - you decide what you want to invest in and then, with securities like equities and bonds, you keep investing in the same things.

If you've decided to invest a specific percentage of your portfolio to global equities, a specific percentage to Japan, and so on, then you should invest your £13,000 in the same things.

Picking things at random isn't investing. Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

I highly recommend you read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em> first, to know why you "can't" beat the market, and then read The Intelligent Investor and see if that disproves it.

The Intelligent Investor is a wonderful book full of timeless advice in somewhat dated language, so there may be better alternatives if you struggle with dry reading. Graham is careful to express his imprecision, so he tends to use phrases like "rather poor" and "somewhat good but not perfect" - whilst I value this myself, his diction may come across a bit convoluted. I think he expresses the fundamental ideas of valuation beautifully, but you may not agree. I think it's Buffett's favourite book and he describes a couple of chapters as reassuring reading when investments are in trying times.

I suspect there are other resources that more concisely teach the specific valuation techniques you'd prefer today, but IMO The Intelligent Investor is timeless volume that brilliantly expresses the philosophy underlying good investing.

I suspect most people here are not performing proper valuations, by the way. I think it's probably a fool's errand to try and value an ETF rather than the individual companies in its portfolio.

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Your Fundsmith has outperformed the index over the last 5 years though, and I'm pretty sure over the last year, too. I expect it to continue to do so.

I too would recommend reading books to increase your knowledge. And the above book is great although I wouldn't say it isn't for absolute beginnings. To understand the basics e.g. how to invest, what shares are, what funds are etc, I would start with this https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0857197819/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_E5aVFbZXWCZNM and then move onto the The Little Book of Common Sense Investing which will help develop your investment strategy. Hope it helps.

I would not have recommended The Intelligent Investor, but I thought you stated in your other thread you'd already bought it.

IMO there's no point in asking further questions here until you've read Smarter Investing, because it covers all your questions and a lot more. It explains the passive investing methodology in a really well-structured way, IMO, that makes a lot of sense - I don't think you'd be asking the questions you are if you'd read it.

Lars Kroijer's videos are also very good - and pure passive.

Watch Lars Kroijer's short video series and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2020/02/18/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathway-sold-apple-stock-kroger-biogen/

Trades been settled. No one is buying because of Coronovirus, That's what I expect from a Bluechip.

Search www.justetf.com

You probably want just a world tracker and not US-only ones.

Watch Lars Kroijer's short video series and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

You should read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

It's basically impossible to lose money in the stockmarket over periods of 10 or 20 years if you follow its methodology - luck doesn't come into it.

Could you please read this thread before posting here again.

Watch Lars Kroijer's short video series and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

> I have a few thousand in Vanguard FTSE Global All cap fund but don’t feel comfortable with all my eggs in one basket in this one fund.

If you look on Vanguard's site for this fund, then click on (I think) "portfolio data", you'll find it's invested in several thousand companies worldwide. It's invested in their stocks, rather than their bonds, i.e. it's a fund of equities.

These days it's very hard to find asset classes other than equities that pay good returns, but essentially your question is "what other asset classes can I put in my portfolio besides equities?"

Watch Lars Kroijer's short video series and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Probably stocks are no riskier than property - they are certainly less exposed to tax, as only a small minority of Brits exceed the allowances of their tax-free ISAs and SIPPs.

Watch Lars Kroijer's short video series and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Read the flowchart and wiki at

Probably whoever is cheapest on Monevator's list of low cost brokers considering the size of the position he plans to take. Not Vanguard because they only allow you to buy their own funds. One of you should probably read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em> first though.

I mean I'd recommend doing some reading yourself and self invest.

I read this book and it was very useful - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Naked-Trader-anyone-trading-shares/dp/0857197819

Aviva Investors are really hot on sustainability. They have a podcast with some good stuff in: https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zb3VuZGNsb3VkLmNvbS91c2Vycy9zb3VuZGNsb3VkOnVzZXJzOjIyODI2Njg5MS9zb3VuZHMucnNz&amp;hl=en-GB

There was a similar question over on Quora a few weeks ago.

https://www.quora.com/Stocks-financial/Me-and-some-friends-want-a-mid-long-term-joint-trading-investment-account-What-is-available-to-us-UK-preferable

Slightly different shape to the graph these days than there was in 2018, with a gentler set of climbs and less of a drop.

It may drop to £8K, but then it may not. There's much more corporate/respectable investment into BTC now, and they're more likely to buy smaller dips.

> Target Price: £500 in 18 months

Did you arrive at this based on current revenues and growth?

Can you share the numbers, please?

Talking about your opinions, whether people like the company and what you think of its business model, is speculation and not investing if you haven't run the numbers.

You should read Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor if you haven't already. I'd argue that you should read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em> first.

1. VWRL already includes emerging markets. It’s roughly 10-11%. By adding VFEM you’re increasing your exposure to Emerging Markets - is this intentional?

2. VTI is US equities only. Assuming you’re a UK citizen and based in the UK, you’re unlikely going to be able to invest in VTI as it’s not a UCITS compliant ETF (there are ways around it if you have substantial capital). VWRL is global equities. They’re not comparable.

3. ‘Safe’ is down to you. The market is unpredictable. Some people might deem this safe, others might think it’s totally unsafe. Depends on what you’re planning for, your risk tolerance etc.

I’d recommend reading: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Investing-Demystified-investment-portfolio-Financial/dp/1292156120

Here is just a snippet from the small print from eToro as an example of what I am relaying:

What do I purchase when I buy stocks on eToro?

When you open a non-leveraged BUY (long) position on a stock, you are investing in the underlying asset, and the stock is purchased in your name. This also applies to fractional shares: for example, on eToro, you can invest as little as $50 to purchase part of a share whose price per unit is $1,000.

When you open a non-leveraged BUY (long) position on a stock, you will pay zero commission* — no markup, no ticket fee, no management fee.

The eToro trading platform is not an exchange or a market. This means that you can only buy and sell stocks within the eToro trading platform. It is not possible to move open positions out of your eToro account to another broker or to another person. If you open a stock position on eToro, you are not issued a stock issuance certificate or allocated voting rights. Nonetheless, should the company issue dividends, your balance will be updated in accordance with your holdings.

Pretty underhand of you to use your referral link, considering it is against the sub rules.

Here is the non-referring link for everyone else: https://robinhood.com/about/?region=UK

I’ve heard ETFs are nice and reliable but fairly low yield. Gold is doing really well right now as people pump into it when times are tough- I think it might dip though when the economy recovers. I used simply wall st to look at all facets of the business and you have ratings. Time will tell about how profitable they are. I think though at the moment dividends are being cut- at least with the 3 property companies I’m in. To answer your original question - split equally over all the companies, no ETFs. Probably a bad idea as I’m just greedy.

As far as I know it's not possible, if it were then I'd be doing it also.

There may be a possible workaround; a company called Curve are introducing a card which you can top up with a credit card and spend like a debit card, however they are currently in legal proceedings with Amex who are trying to block it. Worth keeping an eye on however.

Same for Nationwide. IF anyone knows of a bank that still allowing cryptos?

If you need to get your money out, convert/trade it for USDT, transfer that USDT to coinbase and sell/withdraw from coinbase

If you need to put money into Binance, use WISE account. Quick to setup, easy to use.

https://wise.com/invite/u/alanb1513

What is "typical" of a yearly % increase? Right now I have mine set as 2.9%.

https://www.screencast.com/t/T8kFbeg7rGr6

There are a bunch of things in that Portfolio Returns section that I don't understand, specifically that Pre/Post-Retirement % Return, I've no idea what that means.

I plan on contributing £500 a month soon-ish. I started last month and have contributed only £300.

They're two different brands doing the same thing.

Just like Ford and Honda both make compact cars that target the same market segment, Vanguard and iShares both make trackers of the S&P 500 index.

Let's say Vanguard decided in 2007 to launch an S&P 500 index tracker, to buy £10,000,000 of stock in S&P 500 companies and sell it as an exchange-traded fund at £10 a share.

5 years later, when iShares decide to do the same thing, Vanguard's ETF is worth more than £10 per share because the price of the stock has gone up and dividends have been reinvested (in the accumulation version); its price will be affected by the exchange rate too.

It's quite conceivable that an S&P 500 tracker launched in 2007 for £10 a unit might today be worth £44.49, whilst one launched in 2012 at £10 a share is now worth £23.35. Off the top of my head that seems like quite a high rate of return, but a rate that the S&P 500 has probably achieved over some 10 year periods.

It doesn't really matter which you buy, because they're both reputable companies with comparable costs doing the same thing. Vanguard have a particularly stellar reputation and are investor-owned - i.e. they're not making a profit off you, as I understand it. It might be more convenient to buy the one with lower share price because I think it's more likely to have a lower remainder, but this will not always be the case.

Nice project! I like how clean is, though I can't see where you define the change percentage? What API are you linking in with for the price data?

You could perhaps add push notifications to mobile devices integrating with a serice such as: https://pushover.net/

Started a position in Kape Technologies last week. A UK SaaS play. Revenue CAGR 26%, EBITDA CAGR 46.7% over last five years. 2.5m paying subscribers. Owner of CyberGhost, PIA and recently acquired Webselense.

From the sidebar:

> Welcome to /r/UKInvesting, a subreddit for thoughtful discussion of active investing strategies and tactics.

> Before posting or commenting, please make sure you are comfortable with the following posting requirements:

> 1. You have a sensible reason for not just buying an all-world index tracker

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

The IT Investor website is excellent. It pointed me at https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0857198947/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;creativeASIN=0857198947&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=itinvestor-21&amp;linkId=ece53a259fc4bcbba203a3003680d6d8, which has a free kindle edition you can read in the browser.

Link to the handbook https://www.amazon.co.uk/Investment-Trust-Handbook-2021-essentials/dp/0857198947/ref=sr_1_1?crid=LFWAB19FJLNU&amp;dchild=1&amp;keywords=investment+trusts+handbook+2021&amp;qid=1613482201&amp;sprefix=investment+trust%2Caps%2C154&amp;sr=8-1

link them? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.avuscapital.trading212&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;gl=US

Get yourself a Christmas present and check out this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0273785370/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_t1_6fH4Fb0DKVKW2?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1

I would also recommend this YouTube series from Andrew Hallam:

https://youtu.be/3psiPdkW_Ao

I align with this way of thinking. Long term, passive, boring. I am 90% in equities, 10% in bonds.

Get yourself a Christmas present and check out this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0273785370/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_t1_6fH4Fb0DKVKW2?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1

I would also recommend this YouTube series from Andrew Hallam:

https://youtu.be/3psiPdkW_Ao

If you want a cheap and low power device, you could always buy a Raspberry Pi and a screen.

EDIT: Can't vouch for this product, but something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SunFounder-Raspberry-1280x800-Touchscreen-LattePanda/dp/B0776VNW9C

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

I too have been looking for some books. Although I do find videos better to visually see things. However, as much as youtube has been helpful, I take it with a grain of salt. All the young kids thing they can trade to a million. Not sure that is realistic.

I have recently been reading The Way of the Turtle. A bit more about the psychology side. So far it is decent.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Way-Turtle-Methods-Ordinary-Legendary/dp/007148664X

I would check with your broker if they have webinars you can attend. Being able to learn off proper professionals and ask questions is so key. Pepperstone have some really good weekly webinars.

Best of luck, I picked up trading this year to compliment my investing, as some form of diversification. 8 months later I am still learning. Way harder than I thought it would be. Once I moved onto a real account with real funds, the psychology sides really kicked up. Kind of amazing the challenge mentally. So far I have broken even, but I got my eye on long term success and I think if I keep learning, once it all clicks, it will add some value to my portfolio.

Also helped to stay away from forex and focus on indices. but thats me. Let me know if you find any good books!

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Right now you're basically gambling your money away, and doing it repeatedly. You need to change your habits if you're to be prepared for retirement - you've already left it pretty late.

A few quid spent at Amazon, or time at the local library, would be more wisely spent right now IMO.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad or Your Money or Your Life. Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em> in due course.

You're going to spend hundreds of pounds for just an hour of an IFA's time, and that's not enough time to take it all in.

I've had windfalls twice in my life - once was just £1200 from an insurance claim, when I was about the same age as OP's mate is now. I asked a more knowledgable friend what to do and he recommended a stock which went up 60%, in the course of a few months, before I sold it (because I thought I'd be crazy not to enjoy such a substantial profit). My mate recommended another stock in which to invest my profits and, long story short, it went bust during the dot com crash.

My second windfall was over a decade later and I had time to prepare for it - I read every new post on /r/UKPersonalFinance every day, and asked questions about things I didn't understand.

I advise to OP's mate that he doesn't rely on easy or simple answers from other people, but to try and develop a holistic understanding of personal finance suitable to his needs. Why is property a more suitable asset class for him than stocks and bonds?

Property is probably not the worst investment for someone who wants low risk and to learn nothing about investing - the returns will be lower and he may even make a loss; he will lose any first time buyer entitlements and have to pay stamp duty when he buys a home to live in, but he will always have a house.

Hi I tried to use your app but it didn't work before now it seems to. Looks pretty good and clean, nice job so far. Some minor feedback:

• some stocks are missing. Eg: https://www.lse.co.uk/SharePrice.asp?shareprice=CRL&amp;share=Creightons

Guess there is not much you can do about that because of your API feeds

• on mobile the results boxes are cut in half and don't wrap to the next line correctly.

• search by company name would be nice to have. Eg: search for mongo and you get nothing. MDB you get it.

There are apps on android that do similar, I'm not sure how yours is different but good on you for creating something. Eg:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paytar2800.stockapp

Just put your money in index funds, mate.

You appear to have fallen into the typically-British trap of fetishising property as an investment asset class.

Heed Lars Kroijer (not the usual link I provide here) and read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Yes make sure you use a stop loss BUT read up about guaranteed stops and maybe look at something like ...

I learned so much from this.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Naked-Traders-Guide-Spread-Betting/dp/1906659230

Yeah it’s good but you need to have a solid fundamental understanding before I jump in. I’ve been trading for over a decade and I’ve automated my trades to a point where they consistently make money and I’m still scared shitless and still use a guaranteed stop loss lol.

Hi mate,

I've removed your post as it's more suitable for /r/UKpersonalFinance, although the advice there will probably be to heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

I found the spring crash very stressful - it gave me a knotted feeling in my stomach that I'd lost so much money.

This time it recovered relatively quickly (and I moved some money to cash), but another crash could take much longer to recover.

Unfortunately, bonds are fucked right now, so what's the alternative? I was quite impressed by that guy who is advocating music copyrights as an alternative asset class, but he's running a fund, so he would say that, wouldn't he?

Read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

You'll probably find /r/UKpersonalFinance sub more suited - this is the gambling sub.

You're duplicating the holdings anyway.

An index fund typically contains at least 100 stocks, and trackers of global indexes will contain 1000+.

If you look at the largest holdings of each of these funds, then the top 10% will be Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google. You can't avoid that if you want to be passive and globally diversified.

You will be duplicating those holdings if you have £1000 in the Lifestrategy and £1000 in the retirement date fund, or you will have about the same amount of them if you just have £2000 in the Lifestrategy. It's 6 of one and 12/2 of the other.

In either case you'll have about £60 each of Apple and Microsoft, £45 of Amazon, £37 of Google and about £20 each of Facebook and Johnson & Johnson.

By choosing one or other of these funds you might vary those proportions by 10% or 20%, but I doubt it'll be much more than that.

If you don't want UK bias, why would you buy the Lifestrategy in the first place? Just buy an all-world tracker (i.e. Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap and, if you really must, a bond fund).

You won't achieve a 90:10 stock bond split by buying the target date fund because that increases your bond holdings.

Buying bonds is (in my opinion) buying something that is nearly guaranteed to have zero returns the next 5 years.

I highly recommend you read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em> because it seems to me you don't yet have a joined-up understanding of what these funds are or do, or what their purpose is.

Expected Returns on Major Asset Classes is a university-grade text which covers bond pricing.

It's very technical and I don't know if it quite covers what you're looking for, but it's very good and it's very affordable - it used to be free on Kindle, but now 99p. It's still very reasonably priced in paperback if that's what you want.

I believe this is the same text as the relevant chapters of Ilmanen's major work.

> In terms of attitude to risk, between balanced and adventurous.

IMO "balanced" doesn't really align with having so much money in crypto and equities. You have less than 5% bonds. No, just over 6%, is it?

I've written a couple of times recently that people on Reddit advocate 100% equities because they've never lived through a stockmarket crash, and do not know from personal experience what it's like to lose a lot of money.

Your risk profile has to depend on your own personal feelings, and how it would feel for you personally to lose a lot of money, but 50% equities, 45% crypto and 5% bonds is balls-out adventurous and nothing balanced about it IMO. You might as well not bother with the bonds - your crypto will fluctuate more than you have in bonds.

Have you read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>? I highly recommend it.

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

You'll probably find /r/UKpersonalFinance more suitable for your needs IMO.

Because the price has already gone up is a terrible reason to buy something - you're buying at the top of the market.

FUTR's PE ratio is 255:1, compared to Halfords' 7.8:1. That is to say that for every £1 of profit Future make, you are paying £255 for the stock, when you could be buying £1 of Halfords' profit for £7.80.

What makes you think that FUTR will become 33x more profitable in the near future, to justify its current price?

Read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em> and then Ben Grahamn's The Intelligent Investor.

Someone else has already advised you to read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>, which explains why funds are provably the better investment for the majority of people.

I recommend reading <em>The Intelligent Investor</em> before buying any individual stocks.

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Smarter Investing: Simpler Decisions for Better Results (Financial Times Series) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0273785370/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_SmHTCbRPA8QA8 is the one most people advise but I found it a bit dry and repetitive. Basically the message is buy index funds.

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

In before: Vanguard Lifesaver 100

For your house purchase though I would be slightly more skeptical where you put your money. 20 years anything could happen, but the chances of losing money in a S&S ISA over 10 years is reasonably high so I wouldn't be putting a house deposit there unless I had liquid cash somewhere else, perhaps a traditional ISA

If you want to learn a bit more about markets and investment strategy, this book is very good, easy enough to read and gives good UK specific advice https://www.amazon.co.uk/Smarter-Investing-Simpler-Decisions-Financial/dp/0273785370/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1394958561

> We were planning on investing in two index funds, one tracking ftse 250 and another s&p500

These are a very odd choice - no exposure to Europe, developed Pacific or emerging markets.

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Index funds.

Heed Lars Kroijer and read his book or Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

IMO property is a bad idea, unless you're actually planning to live in it (or you already have a portfolio diversified into other asset classes).

5 years is even less statistically relevant than the graph I offered, though.

(Smith also has previous history managing a corporate pension fund, but it'd take me too long to chart that.)

If your point was that my graph isn't a very good justification for choosing a fund then I'll accept that it's a good point - past performance doesn't predict future returns, and it's probably more important to believe in the manager's reason and methodology when choosing a fund. It's not true to claim that Lindsell Train Global Equity is better or just as good based on what you've posted, though, and I do think it's fair to say that my graph casts doubt on that claim.

If you think I'm a mouthy wanker then fair enough, but Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em> has a few pages (or even a whole chapter?) on statistical analysis of fund performance - over periods of about a decade it's impossible to tell if outperformance is luck or judgement; it's only periods of about 15 or 20 years that judgement becomes likely. Hale's book has the exact numbers and the studies or methodology to back it up.

Thought I would post this video here as I found it pretty interesting. The interview is with James Ratcliffe, founder of INEOS. Ratcliffe worked in the Chemical industrty for Esso before getting into private equity/venture capitalism.​

I found a lot of similarities between Ratcliffes approach and the CEO's in Outsiders (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009G1T74O/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1), a book recommended by Buffett. One of his key skills is capital allocation/investing, a skill that seems to separate average CEO's from great CEO's (he interestingly brings up the statistic that 80% of mergers and acquisitions destroy value). His take on corporate culture and management structure is also strikingly different to that of many other companies (another element that seems to be a great differentiator between average businesses and great businesses). Well worth a watch and I'm tempted to pick up his book if I have the time.

The evidence supports index funds - if you can't wait for <em>Smarter Investing</em> to arrive, then watch some of Lars Kroijer's videos in the meantime.

If you invest in equities any other way, you'd better have a very good reason for doing so - I can't tell you that you should invest in the same actively-managed fund I use, because I can't prove he'll beat the market.

I think the manager I chose will beat the market, but statistically it's unlikely. I believe that statistics don't tell the whole story, but that could just be me kidding and validating myself.

If you read Smarter Investing and reply to this comment then I'll tell you what my reasons are (or, at least, those I can articulate). I will tell you that Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor really speaks to me, and that this particular manager often cites members of the Graham school, Charlie Munger in particular.

I actually looked into The Intelligent Investor myself when I saw it on Audible, but yeah I have checked Audible and they dont seem to have the book, so I am going to have to get it from another source - but thank you.

If you're a passive investor, then IMO Smarter Investing is the best book for you, and /r/UKPersonalFinance is the more suitable sub than this one.

I assume it was someone on this sub who recommended The Intelligent Investor and that's because this sub isn't really for passive investors.

Might well be some suggestions in Ilmanen's Expected Returns.

I can't say for sure as I'm currently ploughing through the free version, Expected Returns on Major Asset Classes. You should definitely read that first, so see if you can tolerate his academic style. I believe the full version has some very interesting stuff in it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Naked-Traders-Guide-Spread-Betting/dp/1906659230

This book, Hands down opened my eyes. Went from loss to profit overnight.

Also register for a practice account on something like eToro. Have a play. It's only Virtual Money.

Have a look at Trader249 also. Some good advice there. He uses Stockopedia and it's well worth the money.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Naked-Traders-Guide-Spread-Betting/dp/1906659230

This book, Hands down opened my eyes. Went from loss to profit overnight.

Also register for a practice account on something like eToro. Have a play. It's only Virtual Money.

Have a look at Trader249 also. Some good advice there. He uses Stockopedia and it's well worth the money.

The S&S ISA is just a "wrapper" - you do the same things inside it as you can do outside it, but it's protected from tax.

Same with self-invested pensions (the details are different though).

You're on the right track.

Read Tim Hale's <em>Smarter Investing</em>.

Monevator's list of low cost brokers.

On my android I use Webull (aka Realtime Stock Quotes), you can sync with your google finance portfolios until google cut it, but it's a way to easily transfer your stocks to another application

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dayup.stocks

Use interactive investors app, and code G5V6 for your fund

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.interactiveinvestor&amp;rdid=com.interactiveinvestor&amp;pli=1 http://www.iii.co.uk/investing/factsheet/G5V6/polar-capital-global-technology-i-gbp

Try this, I recently switched to it after the lse feed issues and am very impressed. UI is slower than my previous but functionally it is well beyond.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dayup.stocks