Which Personal Investment Forum?

Is there a personal investment version of Singletrackworld?

ie, somewhere where there are nuggets of decent advice to be found interspersed between the squabbling, point scoring and willy waving?

TIA.

Citywire has a forum which covers a broad spectrum on finance although the number of active contributors looks fairly limited.

Comments on Monevator.com articles, especially the Saturday news roundup. The squabbling is mainly about Brexit and politics and there are big hitters who railroad everyone elses’ opinions, but overall the advice is usually excellent. Mirror image of STW really…

Or Reddit. R/WSB  “like 4chan found a Bloomberg terminal”, R/Bogleheads for boomer finance, R/UKFire for willy waving (“can I retire early with only £4m in my pension?”) etc.

FT.com. Read the comments section.

Reddit’s UK personalfinance forum can sometimes be useful, if you can get past the many threads from people asking if they’re screwed because they only earn £85k and they’re already nearly 26 and only have £200k in their pension…

If you want to discuss individual (mainly UK) companies, then it’s ADFVN and lse.co.uk

Another vote for Reddit’s UK personal finance forum. The flowchart they’ve developed is pretty useful and worth a look in and of itself.

i nearly suggested ADVFN, but IMO it’s (i) very focussed on shares rather than wider personal finance, (ii) full of either the very naive (it’s going up because it has gone up etc) or the highly manipulative day traders, and (iii) can be internet chat at the very worst of aggressive very personal feuds and pile ons.

MSE back in the day was fun, i remember in the last crunch 07/08, there were one or two posters who were adament BOE  rates where going to sky rocket, they called it a little early :0)

if you are into shares i recommended a while ago and got slated for it, tipranks app has all the broker recommendations, £160 a year, but if you get the freebie version you can view 3 stocks per day, set up a watch list, and you’ll get alerts, if a broker makes a buy/sell/hold recommendation and price target, then click on alerts and the analysts name and the info comes up.

today i got  bob brackett from Bernstein giving a price target of 545p on glencore

yesterday biraj borkhataria RBC capital give Shell a Buy 3400p

and cocacola Buy by olivier nicolai from goldman sachs

so lots of up side in my stocks and shares :0) lol

if you look at SHELL (UK) page   -price just now 2693.25p

10 buys / 2 holds /0 sells

highest price target 4000p, low is 2900 and mid 3356.7p

as always DYOR and only risk what you can afford to lose..

i nearly suggested ADVFN, but IMO it’s (i) very focussed on shares rather than wider personal finance, (ii) full of either the very naive (it’s going up because it has gone up etc) or the highly manipulative day traders, and (iii) can be internet chat at the very worst of aggressive very personal feuds and pile ons.

Yeah, but what is there to discuss if not stocks? You’re either hands on, or else you’re hands off. If you’re hands on then you’re buying stocks, if you’re hands off then there’s not much to talk about – you’ve either put your money away somewhere long term or you’ve paid somebody to do it for you.

Anyone with decent knowledge of personal finance either wants to be paid for their (valuable) advice, or else they’re busy getting on with life and rolling around in all their dosh, they’re not whiling away their time on finance forums.

The world of money management is full to the brim of manipulation at all levels (some of it legal and some of it not), there’s no shortage of people who can’t make money at a primary level (execution), but are happy to make money at some secondary level off other people. You might as well get stuck in at the coal face and see if you can hack it.

On Reddit, UKFire and UKPersonalFinance are useful for sensible advice: save, budget, pension, S&S isa in global index funds etc. but not if you wish to discuss individual stock investing.  Also useful for vanilla tax efficiency.

Although UKPF has descended into a high volume of “stupid people who can’t use google” posts which is quite boring.

The comments on FT articles are decent mainly.

Above stock picking is asset allocation and different ways of achieving asset allocations (unit trusts, investment trusts, ETFs and trackers).  And as we have seen elsewhere, there is the choice of investment vehicle (ISA, SIPPs or taxable accounts).  Very little of that is covered by ADVFN.  And, knowing a bit about financial markets, I’ll state that although share prices at any time are the sum total of lots of opinions and vested interests, some openly espoused, many kept to themselves, there are too many forums and posters on ADVFN which border on boiler room scam for me to feel comfortable recommending to a newcomer.

Yeah I’m not interested in individual shares, just efficient investing in trackers etc.

Wallstreetbets on reddit?

What could go wrong

Yeah I’m not interested in individual shares, just efficient investing in trackers etc.

Probably Money Saving Expert forum then. Slightly less dull than dishwater.

I’ve just been looking on Vanguard.. there’s a mind-boggling array of different products.

I have some money to invest, but I’m going to top up a few missing years of NI payments, I have 3 private workplace pensions that are not really worth anything, one is worth about 16k, the others hardly anything so I should probably consolidate them into a new product like a SIPP or something?

I’m maxed out on my ISA this year, which is currently just over 40k total from previous years..and I’ve just put 50k into premium bonds for a lack of idea what to do with it.

I’m mortgage free, mid 40’s and single so mortgage overpayment is not a consideration. I’m looking to go part time with work/semi retire…It’s a good problem to have I guess but it’s so confusing given my private pensions are very small for my age…!

You can ask on pistonheads

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/forum.asp?h=0&f=206

You can ask on pistonheads

Probably not the first place I’d go for financial advice, hahah!

@mattyfez – what are your ISA’s invested in?

WRT Vanguard, an easy fund to start with is one of their Target Retirement funds, it’s all managed for you.

Then it depends how far down the rabbit hole you want to go?

I’d probably leave £10k in the Premium Bonds for an emergency fund and feed the other 40k into a pension in the most tax efficient way, but I am not a financial advisor.

what are your ISA’s invested in?

I’m not entirely sure! it’s a standard cash ISA with Chip, yeah I just filled up my premium bonds allowance as it should technically do more for me than being sat in my instant access barcalays savings account which has a really crap interest rate.

I don’t really want to micro-manage my investments, at least until I’ve learned more, some sort of managed fund sounds best I think.

So if you want, I believe that you can and (unless you need the money in the next 5-10 years) should transfer your money from the Cash Isas to a stocks and shares Isa.

There are two basic types of managed funds, active and passive. Active are where the fund managers make active decisions to try and beat the market (spoiler alert: they mostly don’t) and charge you extra for doing this. Passive are where they use a set of index trackers, but automatically rebalance for you on a regular basis – these are better.

It’s easy to get analysis paralysis and have that stop you doing anything for fear of getting it “wrong” however actually the worst mistake is to delay starting. If I knew back then what I know now, I wouldn’t have started in the way that I did, but I’m still glad that I started anyway.

Thanks, that’s really interesting.. I’m guessing my premium bonds won’t give an above-inflation return, can I use that money to put into a stocks and shares ISA, as well as having a cash ISA, or does the 20k limit apply to both?

I guess I’m looking to keep my cash ISA and use the money I have in premium bonds to re-invest into ‘something else’.

Technically I’m unemployed at the moment, and not claimig any benefits etc, so I guess I don’t have to worry about tax on savings/interest unless I make more than 12.5k in interest?

The 20k limit is in total per year.

I don’t know about tax I’m afraid.

If you’ve not earned any money this tax year then a pension may not be the correct investment for you as I think that you won’t get the tax relief.

@mattyfez, a SIPP is useful if you are a tax payer, especially a high rate tax payer as for every £1k you put in, the government top it up £250 (and then you can reclaim another £250 (to lower your high rate tax paid)

so essentially you are paying £750 for a £1250 investment, but the money is locked away until you are 57 (55 before Apr2028)

I use a combination of bank savings 3.5-4% for ready cash (earning a max £500 HighRate / £1k basic rate allowance before having to pay tax.), the remainder goes into my SIPP (to reduce tax) / S&S Isa (upto £20k pa)

bank interest would come off your personal allowance, although seems to be a £5k limit,

‘This means you can earn up to £5,000 in interest before paying tax. This is reduced for every £1 you earn over your personal allowance of £12,570 per year (2024/25).’

if you are wanting to move a cash isa to a S&S isa, do the official route, you cannot withdraw the money, it needs to be setup as a transfer between the financial insititutions

Reddit is a great place as others have said – UKPersonalFinance or FIREUK if you are more of an early retirement bent.

In between the how do I get started, and I’m 23 wanting to retire at 50 posts, there is a great community of people who are prepared to give pretty critical feedback.

Have a read around, post up your personal situation and considerations and you’ll generally get some pretty good feedback.

I started reading them over 4 years ago, and my financial situation has improved immeasurably based on the feedback and advice.