The Lemon Fool

Following a couple of current threads in the HYP domain, I was tempted to digress, but thought it’d be better here.

I began investing ~ 40 years ago. Before t’internet you’ll note.
At that time I followed journalistic ‘tips’. Lost money.
Then I found TMF and was converted to HYP. Done OK. Not knocked the lights out but certainly lost less.
Been through a few crises mind, and began thinking that old chap LUni might be onto something.
So over the past few years I’ve been mainly buying ITs. Still got the HYP (as someone put it, a collection of left handed gloves).
Now given the evident direction of travel there, I think the future may include some trackers.

I think the path from open-ended funds to investment trusts to trackers is a well worn one. It's almost as if the more experience one has with investing, the more one realises the futility of trying to beat the market, with its attendant higher costs. Moreover an active strategy requires more administrative work which you may not want to deal with when older. And trading in and out can have tax consequences as well.

At this point I have a mix on trackers and active ITs. The trackers cover regions where I do not feel I have any edge, like Europe and Asia. Whilst I still pick individual shares as well, but mostly in the US market because it is so much broader and deeper than the UK market, which seems to under-perform consistently. It follows from that that I don't have a "legacy HYP" with all those usual suspect duffers.

I think you might be giving Luniversal a little too much credit there with ITs. His focus was more creating an income alternative to HYPs, for those who wanted that. I for one started investing in ITs in the late 1980s, long before then. Originally it was the savings schemes that many IT families ran that got me in, although I gave up on those when the paperwork became irksome.

New money goes into either trackers or ITs, depending on where discounts are. I also run an AIM portfolio for IHT mitigation, although that is very passively run. And an options strategy for fun since I used to do that for work. But otherwise I aim for simplicity these days.

I actually started investing c.1999 and for some forgotten reason, discovered ETFs before ITs. Apart from that, the story's the same. I learned some painful lessons along the way, but tried to learn from the mistakes. My original UK share holdings are still in the original Halifax Sharebuilder account, started long before I'd even heard of self-select ISAs. These days, the thought of buying shares in a single company doesn't ever enter my mind. Kudos to those who do it, and good luck. It's great fun! For me, those days are over and I want diversification in as many ways as possible so I can drink my G&Ts in peace.

Steve

stevensfo wrote:I actually started investing c.1999 and for some forgotten reason, discovered ETFs before ITs.

That is fairly impressive because there were no ETFs listed in Europe before the year 2000:

https://www.funds-europe.com/15-years-s ... hit-europe

Perhaps you encountered them in the US, where they have existed since 1993. The first one was SPY, based on the S&P 500, which now has a track record of faithfully following that index for 27 years.

Lootman wrote:

stevensfo wrote:I actually started investing c.1999 and for some forgotten reason, discovered ETFs before ITs.

That is fairly impressive because there were no ETFs listed in Europe before the year 2000: ...

Simple to discover ETFs before ITs, bearing in mind the poster also talked of original UK share holdings which I took were purchased prior to any involvement with ETFs.

I may be wrong though. I've yet to discover ETFs.

Lootman wrote:

stevensfo wrote:I actually started investing c.1999 and for some forgotten reason, discovered ETFs before ITs.

That is fairly impressive because there were no ETFs listed in Europe before the year 2000:

https://www.funds-europe.com/15-years-s ... hit-europe

Perhaps you encountered them in the US, where they have existed since 1993. The first one was SPY, based on the S&P 500, which now has a track record of faithfully following that index for 27 years.

No, my very first ETFs were definitely here, Blackrock i-shares, but you're absolutely right about the date. I think I was using Halifax Sharebuilder for many years before I discovered ETFs, almost certainly thanks to an article in TMF. Naturally, it then took another few years for me to realise that i-shares were not the only ETFs around and there were others much cheaper. At that time, I may have heard of ITs, but probably had them mixed up my mind with Unit Trusts, so it took yet another few years for the penny to drop. These days, the majority of holdings are ITs and maybe 5 or 6 ETFs, mainly Emerging Markets High Div equity and bond trackers, similar for USA and Eurozone, and a Vanguard FTSE250 tracker (topped up a month ago!).

Steve