Ahh ok, I made the switch setting anyway just in case!

They'd ask for specific account details to pay the dividends into anyway and not assume it was the card you'd bought the funds with, I presume.

Ah yeah the Isa thing will keep within itself, and that could be cash from dividends to a ISA specific bank account. Acc always means reinvestment though. The fund is separate from the platform and if it says accumulation it will be regardless.

It's quite important you understand what this thread is about. It's about investing in a passive fund over a few decades and topping it up from time to time - small periodical amounts or a large cash injection when things are going tits up. 

It's mainly about forgetting about it. A passive fund requires no fund manager to worry about. Suppose you find a really good (and very expensive) manager and he leaves/dies/goes mad. The next one might be shit, and that's assuming you can find a good one in the first place because chances are he'll be no better than the average Index. Buying a tracker is the most basic and safest way to invest in stocks and shares. American passive funds are good. Don't buy one that specialises in any given area. Buy the broadest one you can find, and that's usually a top 100/200/500 companies thing. Once you've bought it and set up a monthly payment into it, get yourself hypnotised so you forget about it but suddenly remember in 30 yrs time.

Unfortunately many look at this thread as a potential quick fix, because stocok market means easy fast wolf of wall street money

Some of the charts lately are proper amazeballs.

https://www.moneyobserver.com/fund/iShares-Core-FTSE-100-ETF-GBP-Dist-USD

cockbeard wrote:

Unfortunately many look at this thread as a potential quick fix, because stocok market means easy fast wolf of wall street money

I don't think it's that, but I think people will overcomplicate the basic Idea. Which particular fund you pick is up to you but America performs best. I'm worried people think I have an inside knowledge on good funds but I never really go for that kind of thing. A tracker will be great without having to do anything.

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Lord_Griff wrote:

Yo that etf has made 100% over 20 years.

Yes don't buy it.

Yep

It's a good fund. There's always a delay between trading and the transaction getting carried out on a cheap platform. One of the reasons it's cheap. Cheap is good over 30 yrs.

Not that platforms go bust. They get their percentage no matter what the markets are doing.

ZMM wrote:

how much would you have to invest to make it worthwhile, say, 5k? 10k?

Define worthwhile. It's a combination of initial investment, topping up and time.

I doubt I’ll be alive in 30 years. But hopefully with some continuing top ups it’ll be decent in 20?

Ok, there seems to be some slight confusion about what we're doing here. This tends to happen when people invest. They start reading around the subject and start getting full on Warren Buffet and think they've spotted better funds etc. 

Tracker funds are cheap because it requires only a small computer program to invest for you. If say a company falls out of the biggest 500 companies the software will sell those shares and reinvest in whatever takes it's place. A fund manager will claim to know stuff the other fund managers don't and take say 1% of yout total holdings every year. They make money no matter what the funds do. 1% doesn't sound a lot more than 0.3% but it really adds up over time.

By acknowledging we know next to nothing and investing a bit in all the companies we are automatically putting ourselves straight in the middle. Better than half the managers and worse than half but without the expense.

You will read things like you get what you pay for but this is rarely true over long periods. Over long periods you will perform averagely. Neil Woodford is a good example. Absolute, untouchable darling of British fund managers until he wasn't. Warren Buffet is actually pretty good but funnily enough by investing in an American tracker you will be buying shares in his fund, which is listed as a company in it's own right and sits somewhere in the top 10 (Berkshire Hathaway).

We are investing broadly and cheaply in American capitalism itself. We aren't going to worry if India suddenly declares war with Pakistan or the price of mangos suddenly skyrockets. All we're concerned about is time, because time on an exponential curve is money. We don't really give a shit what Elon Musk does. We want to invest over long periods without paying some bastard to sunny him/herself for half the year in the Maldives.

The less you care the more money you will make. The danger is when people follow a trend that's already priced in and start buying and selling, thinking they know stuff. Not unlike a fund manager.

SpaceGazelle wrote:

It's quite important you understand what this thread is about. It's about investing in a passive fund over a few decades and topping it up from time to time - small periodical amounts or a large cash injection when things are going tits up. 

It's mainly about forgetting about it. A passive fund requires no fund manager to worry about. Suppose you find a really good (and very expensive) manager and he leaves/dies/goes mad. The next one might be shit, and that's assuming you can find a good one in the first place because chances are he'll be no better than the average Index. Buying a tracker is the most basic and safest way to invest in stocks and shares. American passive funds are good. Don't buy one that specialises in any given area. Buy the broadest one you can find, and that's usually a top 100/200/500 companies thing. Once you've bought it and set up a monthly payment into it, get yourself hypnotised so you forget about it but suddenly remember in 30 yrs time.

Totally get that. It was gonna be a fire and forget and topup from time to time.