u/Poundthirsty

If you could give someone in their 20s just one piece of investing or personal finance advice, what would it be, and why?

It could be something you wish you’d learned earlier, a mistake you made, or a habit that has had the biggest impact on your finances.

I’m interested in advice on investing, saving, budgeting, careers, debt, taxes, or anything else you think every young adult should know.

Hi everyone. I recently started growth investing and the way I understand it, gains/losses that you see on your portfolio at any given time are, to a certain extent, fictitious… seeing as that value can drop/increase massively from one day to another due to a variety of geopolitical and socioeconomic factors. The only time you actually make money, or lose money, is the moment in which you close your position (First, please let me know if I’m looking at this incorrectly).

In light of this, I’m curious to know what your end goal is. In other words, what will cause you to liquidate your positions and move onto another investment vehicle or purchase? For example, is it when you hit a certain growth %, a certain portfolio value, a particular time in your life (e.g. wedding, retirement, kids, etc)…?

If you are growth investing, you have to sell sooner or later to realise your gains (right?), and I want to prepare for that day in my future. Although I enjoy seeing my portfolio grow, I also want to create income streams that produce cold hard cash that I can use to support myself, enjoy life, and not be so entirely dependent on a salary. So, my initial thought regarding my endgame was: build up my portfolio to the point where I have enough capital to buy a studio flat in my area in cash (roughly £300k), liquidate my positions, buy a flat to rent, and then with that rental income stream I will have cash on hand to support myself but also resume investing for the next set of future goals.

What is your endgame? When you are ready to liquidate and enjoy your returns, what will be your next step? Another investment? (If so, which?) Or simply liquidate to enjoy it via personal purchases, travel, etc?

afternoon guys,

Looking for some advice/guidance on what to do.

I read today that Vanguard are reducing the fees on their FTSE all world ETF, making it cheaper than Invesco's version. I currently have most of my portfolio in the Invesco version but I'm not thinking I'll switch to investing into the vanguard variant.

Is there any need/reason to sell my Invesco ETF shares and put all that money into vanguard?

I know I'd loose the growth data displayed in the app from my longer held position in Invesco. Wondering if there are any actual practical differences?

(Update: As of 28 July, Vanguard’s FTSE All-World will be reduced to a 0.14% fee. Announced the day I wrote this and somewhat answering the concluding question - “not very long at all”.

In April, Xtrackers launched a FTSE All-World ETF (ALLG) at the low ongoing fee of just 0.12%. But they quickly slashed this to 0.07% when BlackRock launched their own iShares version at exactly the same 0.12%.

So why isn’t everyone already holding it?

The obvious objections

There’s no distributing version, which rules it out instantly for anyone who needs income paid out rather than reinvested. It’s also young and comparatively small, with £59m in assets still a fraction of an established giant like VWRP.
That newness comes with a practical wrinkle too. ALLG samples a smaller number of holdings than its bigger rivals, rather than owning the full index outright. In theory, that’s a bigger drag on tracking accuracy.

Except it doesn’t seem to matter

Here’s the twist. Over the last three months, ALLG has tracked VWRP just as tightly, despite VWRP holding roughly twice as many underlying stocks. Fewer holdings, same result. If that pattern holds as the fund scales up, the “sampling” concern starts to look more theoretical than real.

A market running out of room to cut

What’s really striking is what happened once ALLG’s fee cut landed. Priced identically at launch, iShares is now stuck at nearly double the cost of the fund it was matched against, and the growth numbers show it. ALLG has gone from around £30m to £59m in AUM in just a few weeks, while iShares has stalled at £22m. It looks like the price cut is doing exactly what you’d expect and money is following the cheaper fund. At this level of maturity, a few basis points is the entire pitch.

That’s the real story here. Fully global index investing increasingly looks solved at the 0.06 to 0.07% price point. Amundi’s PACW matches ALLG’s 0.07% fee while still offering a distributing version and emerging market exposure, tracking a Solactive index built along similar lines to MSCI ACWI/FTSE All-World. If you’re happy to skip emerging markets entirely, UBS’s MSCI World funds (WRDA/WRDD) undercut everyone at 0.06%. And if you just want the US, State Street’s SPDR S&P 500 trackers go as low as 0.03%, with both distributing and accumulating versions available.

The stragglers

This makes the pricing at the other end of the market look increasingly hard to justify. Invesco’s FTSE All-World charges 0.15%, more than double ALLG. Vanguard’s version comes in even higher at 0.19%, nearly triple. These aren’t niche or specialist products; they’re the same index, the same coverage, at two to three times the cost.

The question this raises

If a single-country S&P 500 tracker can be had for 0.03%, and a full global tracker for 0.07%, what exactly are Invesco and Vanguard’s fees still paying for? Brand recognition and fund size clearly count for something, but with iShares already staggering behind a rival that just cut its price by more than 40% in response to being matched, how much longer can a 0.15 to 0.19% fee survive in this market?

Just wanted to quickly mention that today I've had basic rate HMRC tax relief (25%) credited to my SIPP for contributions I made into it during May and up to 6 June. This is of course both expected and comforting to see since the SIPP is newish. I've more due next month (I expect it will again be just after 21st August).

Also good knowing that since I'm a higher rate tax payer, I'll have another 20%+ amount for this due later direct from HMRC. They've already started to positively amend myself tax code perhaps instead of a lump sum.

For anyone who is investing in the S&P in Ireland what do you think of the 38% tax on gains. I’m planning to start investing on trading 212 for the long term but finding out this tax every 8 years has made me question if it is still safe to do so.

I was wondering if the share lending is only effective on some small companies that everyone expects to go down or if you ever get yield on "safe" big companies.

Also who are those shares lent to? Since you can't short normal stock shares within invest or ISA T212 accounts (as far as I am aware), is this lent to CFD traders? Or is this used within some bigger structure with IBKR or other banks?

I’ve began investing using the platform this month. Me and my wife have investments in simple etfs (one S&P 500 and the other has a global etf).

We have had a notification from trading 212 about turning on earning daily interest.

Are there any cons to doing this that I should be aware of?

Thanks for your time.

Hey everyone,

With Revolut dropping its 2.5% APY promo, I’m looking for a new place to park my cash and saw that Trading 212 is offering 2.4% on uninvested EUR.

However, since this yield comes from Qualifying Money Market Funds (QMMFs), I’m having some second thoughts about moving my entire emergency fund there. We are talking about roughly €30,000.

I know QMMFs are generally considered very low-risk and invest in short-term government/corporate debt, and I know the assets are segregated from T212 itself. But since the ICF protection only covers up to €20k for bank deposits (leaving €10k exposed if it's held as cash), and QMMFs technically don't have a capital guarantee if the fund itself drops, I feel a bit uneasy.

Is anyone else using Trading 212 QMMFs for a larger emergency fund like this? Do you feel comfortable taking on this microscopic but technical market risk for a 2.4% return, or am I overthinking it?

Would love to hear your thoughts or if you’ve chosen alternative paths for amounts over the €20k protection limit. Thanks!

Hi all,

I’m looking for some advice on the best way to move my Stocks & Shares ISA from St. James’s Place.

I’m currently invested in the SJP Polaris 4 fund, but I’m planning to transfer the ISA to Trading 212 and invest instead in a low-cost global ETF, most likely either the Vanguard FTSE All-World ETF (VWRP) or the Invesco FTSE All-World ETF.

My understanding is that I can complete an ISA transfer so I keep the ISA wrapper and don’t lose the tax benefits.
The part I’m unsure about is what to do once the transfer has completed. When the transfer arrives as cash in Trading 212 I’m unsure whether to invest the full amount immediately (lump sum), or Drip-feed it into the ETF over several months?

I’d be interested to hear what others have done in a similar situation and whether there are any factors I’m overlooking.

Who here invests in VWRP, chills, and enjoys a cold beer on a hot day? 🍺☀️

I would appreciate some feedback on my planned ETF portfolio. I am investing in a S&S ISA on Trading 212.

\*\*Portfolio:\*\*
\*\*60% VWRP\*\* (Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF)
\*\*25% CNX1\*\* (iShares NASDAQ 100 UCITS ETF)
\*\*15% WLDS\*\* (Global Small Cap ETF)

Time horizon: \*\*32 years\*\*

Im trying to achieve Long-term capital growth

My thinking is VWRP gives me broad global diversification.

CNX1 gives me an additional allocation to the NASDAQ-100, increasing my exposure to large-cap technology and other growth companies that I believe have strong long-term potential.

WLDS provides global small-cap exposure, which I hope will improve diversification since VWRP is mid to high cap and potentially benefit from the long-term small-cap premium.

I know there’s overlap between VWRP and CNX1, but that’s intentional as i believe US tec sector will continue to do well in the long term.

Does this allocation make sense for a 32-year investment horizon?

Are there any risks or blind spots I’m missing?

I’m trying to build a low-cost portfolio that I can stick with for the next three decades or so.

I've had a pretty terrible week with my investments, bad enough to make me feel quite distracted from my day to day life. I know being down is normal, it's part of the process, this isn't a crash etc etc - but it's still very tough to resist the urge to try and gain some wins by trading quite rashly.

I'm feeling a bit sick as a result of seeing my homescreen and £1000+ in loses on my account. It's my mistakes that have cost me, should have just kept to all world fund and left it at that.

There are stocks I've had for a while like NBIS (reddit's fave) that have now plunged into the red, after months and months of strong performance.

I don't want advice on stocks, but how do you tune out the horrible feeling when you're down on money? I don't really want to cut my loses on things like NBIS and hold them for years - I just don't have the judgement and experience to realise when something is simply going to keep bleeding me dry.

Anyway - hope everyone else is OK and if you can offer anything that'll reassure me about continuing to use 212 etc, then please do. Currently considering deleting it but think I need to manage selling off stocks first - which means monitoring the markets still.

I’m currently holding VWRP and my portfolio is in the red after the recent market pullback.
I still have around £8,000 in cash that I intend to invest, but I’m torn between three options:
Invest the full £8k as a lump sum now.
Wait and see if the market drops further.
DCA (Dollar-Cost Average) over the next few weeks or months.
I’m investing for the long term (10+ years), so I’m not trying to time the market perfectly. At the same time, it’s hard not to think there could be more downside.
If you were in my position, what would you do and why? I’d be especially interested to hear from people who have been through previous market dips while investing in broad index ETFs like VWRP.

I was thinking of moving my everyday cash into my T212 account due to the 3.5% interest. Seems far more productive to have my money sitting there as opposed to a revolut account where it is gaining nothing. Am I missing something here?

As the title says, if you have both accounts why and how do you use them?

I have maxed my S&S ISA this year and I have some more cash to deploy. I view my S&S ISA as an account I’ll not need the money for several years so I can ride out ups and downs.

But with the extra cash I could deploy I have a two questions based on my situation. I’ve seen someone online using their extra cash (they run a business FYI) to use in an invest account just investing in a ETF for their tax money. I don’t need it for tax but I’ll need some of it this year.

1 how do you invest the money if you know you’ll need it within the next year/two years?
2 how do you deal with the tax man?

Any advice is helpful.
Currently have the extra cash in an easy access savings account earning 2.3% 🫠