**** Official UK investors thread ****

[iSTRONG]

I tried searching for some info specific to investors living in the UK but there didn't seem to be much around on these forums. I thought maybe a special thread just for UK discussions might be helpful.

A few topics of discussion to start us off;
1. What online Brokers do you use?
2. Any good e-saving accounts?
3. If you had £5K to invest right now where would you put it assuming that you won't touch it for the next 10-15 years and that you don't mind a bit of risk.

[john kane]

excellent idea. ive had enough of people banging on about vanguard - us UKers can use it unless we have vast sums of money.

as for your questions, these are my answers with a bit of background fwiw.

1. i initially opened a tdwaterhouse for my trading ISA. I put £4K into it (most i could with a miniISA). In december 06 i set it up and I bought SAB Miller and Partygaming. It went up to £4,400 then i sold them and invested in their JP Morgan Emerging Markets fund.
I decided i wanted to do more stock buying so i set up their Trading Plus account. I bought £1.5K each in playtech, partygaming, sporting bet and 888. I'm down about £700 at the moment. I should put it all in playtech as it was the only dead cert which would increase (and has been the only one to increase), but i only have a net total of £29K in terms of savings, bankroll, spending money etc and wanted to spread the risk a little.

I have recently set up a www.iii.co.uk account. I have set this up becuase I have been looking into investing in funds which are outside my ISA bracket. tdwaterhouse only allow me to buy funds if it is through an ISA, and given i've used up this years ISA allowance I looked elsewhere and stumbled across iii.co.uk.

2. I use Nationwide e-savings account becuase they always are very competitive and i have a nationwide credit card and flexaccount (cash account) and a savings ISA.

3. As you won't touch it for the next 10-15 years i'd put it in a fund. If you haven't used your ISA allowance this year then use it and put £5K in a maxi trading ISA and then buy a couple of different funds. I'd go for emerging markets and global growth or maybe global property.
I'm tempted to do these other funds as well but i may need the money in the next couple of years for a deposit on a place of my own so im not sure.

hope that is of some interest, im a relative noob, i only started looking at all this a couple of months ago.

[iSTRONG]

John,

Is there any point to an ISA if you play poker for a living and have no other source of income?

[john kane]

in the long term i'd imagine so, becuase you'd hope that the interest or capital gains you'd make would be high enough at some stage that you would otherwise have to pay tax above the limit.

say you had £100K in poker winnings in a non-ISA trading account and you made 10%. with your £10K profit, wouldnt you have to pay capital gains tax on the £1.2K amount above your capital gains allowance (£8.8K)

same as for if you put it in a Cash ISA, i think (may be wrong) interest on your savings counts as income and so would be subject to income tax. if you put your poker winnings into e-savings rather than an ISA, and you got above £5225 (income allowance) in interest then you'd get taxed on that.

Yes this all takes time to get that level of interest but best to look long term.

Admittedly this would take a number of years to avoid via an ISA given you can only put in £7K a year, but still, no matter what happens down the line in terms of poker or getting a job, im sure there are no downsides to putting it an ISA and only potential upsides. Also w

[iSTRONG]

John,

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I'm a complete n00b at this. What do you think of the iii.co.uk self-select ISA service?

[iSTRONG]

Also another random question;

What the point of a mini-ISA if you can put cash as well as stocks in a maxi-ISA?

[Necromancer]

hey istrong, love the videos BTW thanks very much.

This site is the best source of information regarding investing IMHO.

http://www.fool.co.uk/

This one is also useful for checking out index trackers and managed funds

http://www.trustnet.com/help/focus.asp?index

Regarding ISAs National Savings and Investments offers a good rate for the MINI CASH ISA with no fees for withdrawals and gaurenteed to stay 1% above the Bank of England rate for the next couple of years (dont quote me on those details as they are a bit sketchy and you would need to check the yourself)

Barcleys has an account that pays 12.5% but there are lots of strings attached (for example you have to hold your current account there and get a certain paid in each month. Their stock broking service offers trades for £12 or £7.50 if you trade more than 10 (??) times per quarter.

There are plenty of other brokers that offer trades for around £10.

[malorum]

A few topics of discussion to start us off;

1. What online Brokers do you use?

For investing? or for trading? I suspect many people are confused as to what exactly they are doing. If your intending to invest you may as well let a fund manager handle it for you. If you wan't to play a new game then you've got to look seriously as to how well you can leverage your capital and compare this with poker.

2. Any good e-saving accounts?
Yup any of the major UK banks and Building societies. Most allow instant transfer and high interest rates.

3. If you had £5K to invest right now where would you put it assuming that you won't touch it for the next 10-15 years and that you don't mind a bit of risk.

lol. First option is to spend it on your kids, or having a good time with your friends and family (Matthew 6:19)

Second option is to dump it in your e-saving account. This is if you wan't to use it as a buffer against illness or unforseen circumstances. For that kind of buffer you don't want risk.

Third option "If you don't mind a bit of risk"
Play poker or Forex or Chess or whatever else you happen to do well enough to make the money in the first place, and see wether you can leverage the money rather more safely and effectively than you could in anything else.
I suspect you can if your half as good as you probabably think you are.
In the current online poker environment you can win more than 5k GBP in a month without ever putting the whole amount
at risk. Ok you have to put some hours in but thats over 100% ROI in a month, and to a certain degree its scalable at least with the kind of amounts your talking about.

If you don't play poker but have your own business then if you only have 5k to invest I'd again suggest investing it in your business.

The time to pay other people to put your money at risk for you is when you have so much that you can no longer do it yourself.

[john kane]

was given some free financial advice from an IFA, who recommended this site for dealings:

www.h-l.co.uk the initial charges for funds are significantly lower and only £9.95 per trade.

It is the initial charges aspect which is appealing, rather than 1.5% they are 0% to 0.4% in most cases.

[Christophers]

I'm pretty n00bish at all this but really want to learn. What would you guys recommend I do with around £50K or so? At the moment I've got it all in an ING Web Saver account (5.5%AER or so) and as much as I can get in an ISA with Barclays.

I've heard a lot of good things about index funds, are the online brokers you're all recommending the way to get started in that?