Deciding how to weight your portfolio
Asset allocation is the bedrock of successful investing. The challenge for investors lies in deciding exactly how much to allocate to each asset class.
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Building block of many investor portfolios
Investing in bonds, pooling your money with thousands of other small investors
Bonds are debt issued by either a government or a company and are an essential building block of many investors’ portfolios. When you buy a bond, you are effectively extending a loan to the issuer of the bond.
Open-ended funds
Professionally managed collective investment funds
Unit trusts and open-ended investment companies (OEICs) are professionally managed collective investment funds. Managers pool money from many investors and buy shares, bonds, property or cash assets and other investments. An open-ended fund could be visualised as a big pool of money – the money belongs to thousands of small investors.
A higher return on your investment
Invest as much of your annual ISA allowance as you like in either a Stocks & Shares ISA or a Cash ISA, or any mixture of the two
Some people never look beyond Cash Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs), but by using Stocks & Shares ISAs too, you could get a higher return on your investment. Stocks & Shares ISAs can contain shares, bonds and investment funds. There are no restrictions about where in the world you can invest: it does not have to be all in the UK.
Reducing investment risk
Choosing a broad spread of instruments in which to invest
If you require your money to provide the potential for capital growth or income, or a combination of both, and provided you are willing to accept an element of risk, pooled investments allow you to invest in a large, professionally managed portfolio of assets with many other investors. As a result of this, the risk is reduced due to the wider spread of investments in the portfolio.
Why are you building an investment portfolio?
Every investor is unique, but everyone faces the same trade-off between risk and reward
The best place to start when you are looking to build a diverse investment portfolio is to ask yourself why you’re building a portfolio. For most of us, the central task is to build a pot of money that involves you, the investor, taking some risk over the long term, at the end of which you will have ideally built up a sizeable portfolio of diversified assets that will last you through to your retirement years.
Principles of diversification
Minimising exposure to volatility and market setbacks
Investing would be easy if markets rose in a straight line. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. Over the long term, assets such as shares and bonds have tended to produce positive returns, but there have been several bumps along the way. In any event, past performance of investments cannot be taken as a guide to their future performance.
Portfolio diversification
Managing the risks you are exposed to in order to avoid suffering losses to your capital
Whether you’re planning to start investing your money, or even if you’re already a seasoned investor, it’s crucial to make sure you manage the risks you are exposed to in order to avoid suffering losses to your capital. The key is to build a diverse portfolio with a mix of different investments that makes sense for your attitude to risk.
Unlocking the New pension landscape
Are you ready for the responsibilities of being in complete control over all of your money?
On 6 April this year, ‘pensions freedom day’, the pension landscape changed forever. From this date for the first time ever, individuals were given complete control over all the money in their ‘defined contribution’ retirement savings plans, whether large or small.
With great freedom comes great responsibility
Savers positive about pension reforms but concerned about scams
The new pensions freedom rules giving far greater flexibility over what you can do with your pension pot came into force on 6 April 2015.
