Who uses a financial advisor?

[jsmoke]

People pay advisors to pick stocks for them etc, some seem to do well. So essentially the advisor becomes their hedge fund manager taking a cut.

Does anyone use one or do you pick your own stocks, do your own investing, I'd imagine a good picker could make a fortune. Are city analysts allowed to set themselves up like this on the side while still working in the city?

What return do you get what are the risks?

 

[jsmoke]

Vanguard?

So that's as good as you can get?

 

[jsmoke]

I wouldn't say that, but I know a lot of forum members use vanguard and put a set amount away each month.

What's the return roughly, 4%?

 

[jsmoke]

I'm not sure what it's like this year, but usually these funds return 8-12% it's stocks and shares tough, anything can happen

That's really impressive, I'll have a look.

 

[jsmoke]

Unless you have the excess £ and a lot of time then any sort of active management either DIY or via an intermediary is pointless imo.




This, or equivalent passive / index funds.

Your probably right, you'd need to invest 100,000 a year to get 10,000 back.

 

[jsmoke]

How much would you be looking to invest?

Not a lot few thousand a year. I was speaking to a girl on twitch and she was saying she made $1000 last month from her stocks who get financial advisor picks for her. I didn't get a chance to ask her the details but will next time. I can't imagine she would be lying or not know what she's talking about, maybe she's been investing for years though.

 

[jsmoke]

It's variable. I'm up 28% in 3 years, but I could have easily lost that much or more too! The important thing is to make sure you only invest money that you have no present need for. Make sure your debt is in hand and you have a sufficient emergency fund to not need to sell any shares because of a problem.

I don't believe in managed funds, you're essentially spending your money for someone to talk you into investing in them and they usually make delayed decisions, if they make any decisions at all. Remember each trade costs money, so they want to minimise these.

Care to tell us how you got 28% I thought even Warren buffet couldn't come near that?

 

[jsmoke]

Too be honest for a few thousand a year you would probably struggled to find an IFA to deal with you. The cost for IFAs has gone up dramatically over the past few years and generally not make it worthwhile for them in the inital stages. We have seen the advice/wealth gap increase due to these cost's to IFAs. Typically I would suggest using an adviser when you are coming closer to retirement or having larger amount of funds that you don't want investing into one single fund.

It always puzzles me that there are enough people to keep all these IFA's and lawyers or whatever high paying job, in business.

So we are back to the fact that there's no instant money tree, there's either long term investing, having a lot of capital to invest ideally with insider information or crime.

 

[jsmoke]

It's got little to do with being some stock picking savant, it's about contacts, relationships, perceptions etc..

Yeh the good old boys networks and alliance's, do you think that's an acceptable/good/necessary/etc thing or just plain unnecessary and greedy, is this what makes the country go around or are individuals just getting filthy rich because they know how to?

 

[jsmoke]

Why would it be unacceptable? Surely it’s up to the wealthy people whether they want to trust someone to manage their portfolio. Others are free to try and convince them otherwise. It’s not necessarily old boys network, networking can involve many things and sometimes clients will be passed on via personal recommendations from other clients (wealthy people tend to have networks containing other wealthy people), brokers actively encourage and sometimes directly ask for this.

But the money stay in one area generally speaking what about the poorer areas around the country.