Taking the ETF plunge

How are you getting on?

Hi 3CC
Considering investing in ETF's after reading a couple of investment for beginners books. I live in uk currently and have a cash ISA with HSBC. They have lots of ETF's which can be used as an ISA so considering transferring funds into a couple.
I read this trail with interest and wondered how you got on? Any avice?
NBC
 
I eventually took the plunge with these ETF's , just dived in and bought a few Ishares ones , emerging markets , MSCI world and MSCI Europe , tbh I don't know why I waited so long . Went with Saxobank in the end and put 30k in , bought 4 ETF's checked in a few days and they where worth 29k , now they are back up to 30k . Been a gambler I am actually more prepared for losses than I realised , losing the full 30k is so unlikely but even if I lost 50% of my whole portfolio in a day I don't think i would get too down about it.

I spent so long reading about the tax and the 8 year rule of selling them in the end i just decided i'm going to do nothing , when its nearly 8 years i'll ring revenue and hopefully it will be less complicated then.

I'm going to add 5k a quarter now to my ETF's , just keep topping them up for the next 8 years anyway and see how that goes.
 
3CC aren’t you paying RB far too much commission? 1.25% up to 9k and 0.5% over this, with TDwaterhouse isn’t it €15 per trade and no more? Is the CREST account worth this much more over the chance that the broker will get into financial trouble? Brendan commented on a thread a couple of months ago saying I shouldn’t worry about Saxo (http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=188191). Is there close to 0% chance that they’ll fail, and if not what would happen to our ETFs?

As for accumulating ETFs, I’m still struggling to understand the charts of them. Looking at the iShares MSCI Europe both income http://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/products/251860/ishares-msci-europe-ucits-etf-inc-fund and accumulating http://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/products/251861/ishares-msci-europe-ucits-etf-acc-fund the acc fund growth of hypothetical 10k is lower than the income etf at many points in time.

I would have expected it to always be higher, as the income etf will have the dividends paid to the holding account, rather than being reinvested and hence increasing the value of the fund. Anybody able to expain this? Similarly the iShares S+P 500 UCITS etf gives a higher hypothetical growth of 10k over the past 3 years than the accumulated fund.

Finally if the distribution frequency is say quarterly – why doesn’t everybody invest the day before dividend payments and sell the day after?
 
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