I've got a cash ISA and have just been told that the interest rate is reing reduced by a further .5%.
It's a variable rate ISA because at the moment I don't want the funds tied up in a fixed rate.
With banks now talking about negative interest rates together with suggestions that the virus could spell the end of cash is there any wisdom in buying gold? I'm only talking about a modest amount - not hundreds of thousands worth.
Anyone got any thoughts?
I offer no advice as to whether it is a good idea or not but the price is currently near to a 30 year high.
Chards are good to deal with, transparent pricing. Good educational content on their site too.
I can't see how it can possibly get much higher than it is now, although stranger things have happened. Just go to any live gold price site and see what's happened in just the last 12 months alone, it's all over the place.
As others have said, buying gold at the top of the market isn’t an obvious choice. By way of contrast, stock markets are still at least 25% down on their pre-virus peak, which suggests that there’s a potential gain of 33%. Clearly, it could take a few years to recover that ground, but....
Iron is the way to go.
A poster called Basemetal giving advice on gold? I'm out.
> I've got a cash ISA and have just been told that the interest rate is reing reduced by a further .5%.
> It's a variable rate ISA because at the moment I don't want the funds tied up in a fixed rate.
> With banks now talking about negative interest rates together with suggestions that the virus could spell the end of cash is there any wisdom in buying gold? I'm only talking about a modest amount - not hundreds of thousands worth.
> Anyone got any thoughts?
My advice is not to invest in anything you don't understand. It MIGHT be a good bet, but no one actually knows.
Thanks for comments and advice
> A poster called Basemetal giving advice on gold? I'm out.
As Kenneth Williams never said
”Alchemy! Alchemy! They’ve all got it alchemy!”
> With banks now talking about negative interest rates together with suggestions that the virus could spell the end of cash is there any wisdom in buying gold? I'm only talking about a modest amount - not hundreds of thousands worth.
I would take 'Money Saving Expert's advice, and invest it in scrap metal futures - things like broken steam irons, and so on. The resource market is certain to bounce back once the world lockdown finally ends.
Always believe in your soul . You're indestructible....
People buy gold as a safe harbor, when times are bad. Gold doesnt pay any interest. So your betting on the price going up. I'd suggest that the bad bit is behind us, but I expect it will be a long, slooow recovery, years not months.
As shares go up, gold prices go down. So you'd be buying something that is very expensive now, when the outlook is that the price will go down over time. The usual way to do it, would be to buy things that are cheap now, when the outlook is that their price will go up over time.
Look at your question another way. With interest rates so low, is there any reason to invest in cash long term? A global equity ETF (not a UK-specific one) would be my first choice, particularly while prices are not fully recovered. Or an aggregate bond ETF for something more boring but yielding more than cash. Ideally a bit of both.
If you do choose to invest in gold, be aware of your options how to do it.
Buying physical gold through a broker (holding it on your behalf) is expensive.
You can buy shares that loosely relate to the gold price, usually a fund of gold mining companies, but performance has lagged the gold price.
Exchange Traded Comodities (a derivative contract based on the gold price with a financial counterparty) are the value option, so long as the counterparty you deal with is sound enough to make good on the contract [we aren't there yet, but an analogy is Lehmans going bust in the Financial Crisis].
As to whether you should......
If you are looking for somewhere to put cash, think about renewables. I'm getting a steady 5-6% on investments made through Ethex, which provide loans to buy small scale solar systems for households in Rwanda and the DRC, which then slowly pay back from their savings in not buying petrol for generators.
So far (I've been in this scheme for a couple of years) every repayment has been bang on time, in marked contrast to quite a few of my UK based P2P investments. And unlike most investments you can see that you're doing good deeds with your money.
I think finance is f**ked for the foreseeable. Just follow George Best’s example: “I spent £millions on women & drink. The rest I just squandered.”
> ..........Just follow George Best’s example: “I spent £millions on women & drink. The rest I just squandered.”
Absolutely right. In my long life I've blown huge amounts of money on wine, song, good food, and expensive travel. And I don't regret a penny spent. And I never will
As a yoof I used to climb with an older teacher who used to say "I'd rather die at 40 with a smile on my face". Absolutely right
I think you missed the boat by about 2 months
> A poster called Basemetal giving advice on gold? I'm out.
Huh? Basemetal is into gold? Hardly a new idea...
Arms is where the money is
> If you are looking for somewhere to put cash, think about renewables. I'm getting a steady 5-6% on investments made through Ethex, which provide loans to buy small scale solar systems for households in Rwanda and the DRC, which then slowly pay back from their savings in not buying petrol for generators.
> So far (I've been in this scheme for a couple of years) every repayment has been bang on time, in marked contrast to quite a few of my UK based P2P investments. And unlike most investments you can see that you're doing good deeds with your money.
Intrigued, I had a look at the website and, though the business’s credentials are satisfactory, and its CEO impressive, this looks like a rather high risk investment. One I’d explore for its environmental and sustainability tilt but not its risk profile. And not for a stranger’s core ISA savings. The firm is weakly capitalised and the assets illiquid so the ability to withdraw your funds could be compromised in the type of circumstances where you are mostly likely to need them. An interesting proposition all the same. Just don’t go all in!
> I think finance is f**ked for the foreseeable. Just follow George Best’s example: “I spent £millions on women & drink. The rest I just squandered.”
If you invest in canned beer you can sell the aluminium when you've drunk it all. Win win!
I've just had an unpleasant and revelatory experience with P2P.
I've been trying to get out of Zopa for some time because my actual return was about 3% due to the horrendous number of bad debts. Now that I try to sell the loans I find I can't sell the ones that are defaulting. That left about 10% of my money stuck for the time being at least.
I've got money in other more targeted P2P but am hesitating in putting any more in until the economy starts to recover and we can see where we're heading.
Agreed: I'd assumed an investor considering buying gold would be relatively sophisticated, but you're right, I might have spelled that out a little more.
I have four tranches of savings: some very dull, predictable and safe ones, some rolling annual saver type accounts that are there to pay the regular self employed tax bills, a chunk in a local hydroelectric station that's locked up for 20 years, and then a 'fun' type in much riskier places. I always assume that I could lose 100% of that fourth category - and I always make sure that I'd not actually be in trouble if they all fell through!
Of that fourth category, crypto did very well a few years ago, and p2p after that, but both of those are in significant decline now and I'm more or less out of both. Lendy is going to make a significant dent, but I'm still coming out on top overall. Sustainable investments such as Energise Africa (via Ethex) seem to be doing much better right now, and have been reliable over the last few years.
But yes - I wouldn't put anything I couldn't afford to lose into Ethex, and IANAFA!
Edit to reply to Eric: I never had anything in Zopa, but I was in a similar place with Lendy - when I wanted to get out I obviously couldn't offload the loans that were already in default. The properties now seem to all being slowly sold off at much much less than their valuations, and there's court action impending. The provision funds suddenly seem very insufficient. I'm glad I had very little in Collateral. Ratesetter and Assetz have done much better for me, but I am still getting out and not reinvesting as things mature. I think it'd be a brave person who put fresh money into p2p right now.
Did we not have an interesting conversation about P2P a few months ago.
Buying at the bottom of the market which went into a complete nose dive a few weeks ago was the thing to do. It has since considerably improved.I think you might have missed the boat.
> Did we not have an interesting conversation about P2P a few months ago.
> Buying at the bottom of the market which went into a complete nose dive a few weeks ago was the thing to do. It has since considerably improved. I think you might have missed the boat.
Not on the FTSE100 you haven't! But it's full of old economy companies so the recovery will be likely be slow. A good entry point for the patient, cautious and internationally averse investor though.
With a very mixed global investment I certainly have since a whopping collapse and then excellent recovery gains.Annoyed with myself for not investing more at the bottom.Lost my nerve.Probably like alot of people.
I do not rely on UK
Gold is a very good store of value, it proved its effectiveness over thousands of years.
The amount of gold that would buy a bottle of wine in 200BC is roughly the same as it is now.
However storage costs are high. Probably not worth it under 50K worth of gold.
Still not a good idea to put everything in gold. Better yet, a currency basket + some metals including gold.
> With a very mixed global investment I certainly have since a whopping collapse and then excellent recovery gains.Annoyed with myself for not investing more at the bottom.Lost my nerve.Probably like alot of people.
> I do not rely on UK
The problem for me was not so much lacking the courage as lacking the liquidity to invest in the height of the panic. I was fully invested already and the crash so sudden that, barring some rearrangement of my equities, it has been necessary to hold on tight and endure the volatility, which may endure. Normally, I could have sold bonds to release cash but they had fallen as far as the equities. Never seen anything like it, even in 2008.
> Buying at the bottom of the market which went into a complete nose dive a few weeks ago was the thing to do. It has since considerably improved.I think you might have missed the boat.
Yes I put the money I took out of P2P and put it into 3 ETFs when the stock markets began to recover after their initial drop and so far, so good.
A mate pestered me to stick £1 in via Trading212 so he got a free stock. Subsequently I've now put in £14 and since Wednesday I'm 42p up. Fun playing around with a few quid and tempted to put more in but going to learn more before committing.
> Yes I put the money I took out of P2P and put it into 3 ETFs when the stock markets began to recover after their initial drop and so far, so good.
Takes some nerve. Well done. Even more so if you picked the Nasdaq.
> A good entry point for the patient, cautious and internationally averse investor though.
The op?
A 3% gain in three days? Keep that up and you'll have more than £500 this time next year!
> Takes some nerve. Well done. Even more so if you picked the Nasdaq.
S&P 500 actually.
It's money I can afford to gamble with. I'll not be getting my house on anything for some time to come.
> S&P 500 actually.
> It's money I can afford to gamble with. I'll not be getting my house on anything for some time to come.
Still an excellent choice.
P2P looks like dead money now ,nice timing
What is your ISA money for? If it's essentially a gambling pot, then grab some bitcoin or gold or artwork and roll the dice.
Assuming you are using it for what most people are using it for, which is to grow it in the medium to long term into a larger sum to eventually be used for a house/business/retirement or whatever, then invest in something boring and standard and don't throw it away trying to game the markets. That means, buy a property or invest in a large mutual fund/tracker fund/bond fund or invest it in a retirement fund of some kind.
There are people who spend their entire lives becoming experts in investments and about half of them spent that entire life slowly trickling away other peoples money as they make wrong predictions. If you are coming on UKC to ask for advice on this stuff, you absolutely should not be investing in one specific commodity.
If you are completely risk-averse, either a) keep it as cash in an account and accept that it will slowly devalue over time (you can always revisit this decision if and when negative interest rates actually come to call) or b) use it to buy something you really want or need.
In fact, what you should really be doing is ignoring everything and everyone in this thread and doing some research on investment and money saving websites to find a selection of low risk, low return options and going with those.
> I've been trying to get out of Zopa for some time because my actual return was about 3% due to the horrendous number of bad debts. Now that I try to sell the loans I find I can't sell the ones that are defaulting. That left about 10% of my money stuck for the time being at least.
Ditto on the interest rate after bad debts. Only I'm with Funding Circle. However you must be luckier than I am if you can still sell out because selling out of your position with Funding Circle is a slow process I started about 3 months ago and had to stop a couple of weeks back because they froze the second hand selling market because (surprise surprise) everyone was bailing at the same time. I'm amazed that your bad debts are as low as 10%, that's incredibly good luck, are you sure that's right? They might be hiding the true extent of defaults by just labelling loans as "late" just now. If it's anything like Funding Circle your true bad debt is going to be closer to 50%. I'm sure some of that debt will restart payments when the economy starts moving again though, so that won't translate to a 50% lost of principal in the long term.
I'm resigned to what has happened but it's a bit irritating to have spent months reading everything anyone had written about P2P and its risk profile (including the people who didn't have a vested interest!) and then find that even before the Corona Virus situation started to bite, all the predictions were horse manure.
> P2P looks like dead money now ,nice timing
Agreed, mainly.
I've got some money invested in wind farms through Assetz Capital and as far as I can tell they're still paying off their loans.
Property development and care homes on the other hand...
The remaining cash I've still got in P2P is all in secured loans, generally at 60 or 70% LTV so if things do go wrong I should get most if not all the money back eventually.
That's what was worrying me about Zopa. They are lending to a lot more people, unsecured, for things like holidays and paying off credit cards. They do charge high interest rates which reflects the risk but if they default, you lose and not Zopa. As a long term investment, ten years maybe, this might be ok as you'll have earned a decade of interest on your cash but shorter term it's not good and as I said, the real rate of return I was getting was very much less than advertised.
I’ve got to say the appeal of lending to people whose finances are so ropey that they can’t get a bank loan, and whom I’m not allowed to meet, as opposed to owning a little bit of Microsoft and a little of Alphabet (Google) and a little of Apple, great companies whose profitability and business plans are transparent and credible, is hard to justify.
If anyone really wants to invest in credit, then just buy a strategic bond fund with a sensible mandate from a respected investment house that you’d trust your pension with, and don’t get drawn into schemes run by “here today, gone tomorrow“ chancers.
Coke
1 key of un cut premium grade Bolivian magic dust £17k add 5 kgs icing sugar mix and hey presto 6 kgs of street snort and £102k ie £85k profit
And 10yrs ish if caught
> What is your ISA money for? ...
> In fact, what you should really be doing is ignoring everything and everyone in this thread and doing some research on investment ...
Very good advice. There are no short cuts. If you are serious about this subject, then you need to get your hands dirty, put in plenty of time, and learn from mistakes.
> Arms is where the money is
Agreed. I’d buy one full arm new, then look for another on the second hand market.
Boom boom.
> Very good advice. There are no short cuts. If you are serious about this subject, then you need to get your hands dirty, put in plenty of time, and learn from mistakes.
I'm not sure I agree that one needs to do loads of research and put lots of time in.
Simply picking one major, internationally diversified investment trust (say FRCL.L) and investing a set amount each month is a pretty reasonable strategy.
Invest in Lead.
Good for protecting you from the possibility of the massive amount of gamma ray's that may soon be zipping around the Earth's atmosphere.
> I'm not sure I agree that one needs to do loads of research and put lots of time in.
> Simply picking one major, internationally diversified investment trust (say FRCL.L) and investing a set amount each month is a pretty reasonable strategy.
It is. But even that has massively underperformed the S&P500 on a 10, 5 and 1 year basis. Furthermore you'll have to hand back fund management fees that run 5x higher than a S&P500 ETF. And that isn't the end of the fees. Investment platforms charge you a holding fee on top of the management charge for trusts and funds but, in the case of Hargreaves and others, not for ETFs. That can stretch the fee differential to a factor of 10x
All the evidence points to highest risk adjusted returns with an index tracking ETF.
https://www.fidelity.co.uk/markets-insights/investing-ideas/funds/gold-move...
This article might be of some interest to you.
> But even that has massively underperformed the S&P500 on a 10, 5 and 1 year basis.
Yes, agreed, an S&P500-tracking ETF is also a good strategy.
> Investment platforms charge you a holding fee on top of the management charge for trusts and funds but, in the case of Hargreaves and others, not for ETFs.
Hargreaves Lansdown does indeed charge for holding funds, but not investment trusts (nor, as you say, ETFs).
> Hargreaves Lansdown does indeed charge for holding funds, but not investment trusts (nor, as you say, ETFs).
Good to know. I don't invest in trusts so I assumed they were treated as funds, but I guess they trade like equities so it makes sense.
And etf backed by physical gold.
I bought a load when we voted out. Up 45%. Not selling. Look what happened to bitcoin. They pretty much aren't producing any more of the stuff. Cash is pretty much worthless.
Use physical backed etf.
It could go down.
> I bought a load when we voted out. Up 45%. Not selling. Look what happened to bitcoin. They pretty much aren't producing any more of the stuff. Cash is pretty much worthless.
> Use physical backed etf.
> It could go down.
That's been a very good investment but it's still shy of the S&P 500 which has returned 50% since Brexit. More to the point, if you'd bought it in 2011 or 2012 you'd barely have any profit to show for it nearly 10 years later. Gold has its uses as a portfolio diversifier, in place of bonds, but it's rather risky as a main bet.
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