Higher management costs and fees, pretty minimal considering.

Go for clean funds.

Or go with a decent broker and get a trail rebate.

increased trading costs active funds incur

What are they then?? What trading costs do passive funds not incur then?

What tracker could I go for if I wanted a decent Absolute Return fund equivalent then? Or a cautious approach equity fund like Troy Trojan Income?

Steve77 – so am I right in thinking you’d choose a FTSE tracker fund to invest in? Or something else away from equities perhaps?

I’ve never sold a fund which isn’t so sensible really but none of them have flagged up as obvious sells for me – I could have done better by switching but no dogs. So I have bought 27 funds since ’96 4 of which I increased holdings in at a later date – so 31 purchases – all in ISAs bought in batches each year. I have constructed a spreasheet to track performance and had a good stab at calculating annualized returns for each individually, each year’s ISA and total. I have done the same for FTSE so I can compare each ISAs performance against it.

Overall I have an annulized return of 8% against FTSE’s 3.5%. Each year’s ISA has beaten FTSE though some funds haven’t.

So yes I believe decent funds/managers are worth paying for but I have never paid for advice and have used research from Close Brothers in recent years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bd244

So you’re telling me every single ISA you’ve invested in since 96 has outperformed the FTSE? It wouldn’t be polite to say that’s BS but it sounds like you’re in the wrong job as you have a record that’s miles better than virtually every fund manager out there

Dobbo passive funds use sampling and trade as infrequently as possible to keep their costs low. Active funds have much higher trading volumes as they move in and out of positions according to their strategies. Ironically although there’s no guarantee of success with funds you can virtually guarantee failure if you pick a fund that trades extremely actively and racks up huge costs

Anyway it’s been an interesting discussion but I’m only saying the stats show for every person who beats the market there are 2 equally intelligent and informed people who would have been better off in a tracker. Well done if you got lucky but it’s not good advice to give to people planning for their retirement. It’s all out there if you have a google

Yes I said in my early posts that not sensible for people to rely too much on funds when close to retiring – buy only because the market can drop back so timing can be a pain. I said every year’s ISA as a whole has outperformed FTSE (comfortably as it happens); I have a spreadsheet showing me this. And no this doesn’t mean I should work in the industry as that doesn’t mean I know about equities – it just means I have chosen the right managers. I know a bit about this sort of thing as did study investment in my degree so I suppose I could have tried to go that way if I’d been interested. Does help with my personal investments but not interested in spending much time on it.

Best fund I’ve held long-term is Old Mutual UK Select Small Cos – a mate who was an IFA got me into that one. I could tell you them all if you really want me to prove myself?!

as this is a bike forum, I suggest buying lots of bikes.