pjbetman wrote:Grumpy David wrote:pjbetman wrote:Tomous wrote:Not sure I've asked this before but I'm finally getting my gooseberry fool together-what's the best way of investing in index funds?
I want to use the £20k ISA allowance and put it in some index fund where it can sit for the long-term and tick along nicely.
What are the best online portals to do this through? Obviously looking for as low a fee as possible. Nutmeg is one I've been looking at.
Look into Blockfi. 8.6% on balances.
Use this ccode for $10 each:-
https://blockfi.com/?ref=958e20e9
Doesn't seem to fit the criteria of:
Being able to use the ISA allowance
Being an Index Tracker
Yeah true, but why put it in an ISA that will perform miles worse than the blockfi accounts, despite it being tax free? The same logic for the index tracker. It was just a suggestion to use a better source of income/interest. And there's loads of them now - crypto.com, blockfi, nexo, wirex etc. people need to be moving away from these poorly peforming low interest bank accounts, ISA's, trackers etc. The banking system will be dead in 5 years unless they treat their customers fairly, like these new starters are. They've raised the bar massively. Debit/credit cards and loans are next for these institutions.
My S&S ISA has from June 2018 to January 2021 returned 55% and I'm willing to post the screenshot if not believed. That's a tax free return too due to the ISA wrapper and that's from holding during the lockdown market crash last March when it went to minus 20%. And being a regulated company it has the FSCS and Financial Ombudsman consumer protections you'd expect.
Blockfi is “high interest” because it’s not a savings account and it’s not a bank - it’s some random company offering high interest to get your money. "If it sounds too good to be true..."
If (when) they go broke your money is gone.
When they get hacked like other crypto sites have done, your money is gone.
When exposed as the largest fraud since Enron or Bitconnect, your money is gone.
If you want to gamble on it, ok, but this is an incalculably high risk product and should be treated as such.
Peer to peer finance sites like Ratesetter have far more risk than people realise and can be far less liquid than people expect them to be and especially when they need them to be. Lending your money out to low credit scoring clients is high risk lending. If the bank won't lend the client money because of failing to meet either/both affordability / credit scoring requirements then why should you want to take such a risk? Do you trust these Meme companies to do sufficient KYC and DD on their prospective clients?
I've a high risk tolerance for investing but this is the sort of thing thing that belongs in the 95/5 ratio (and arguably not even in the 5). 95% of your savings into normal index trackers etc and 5% into the "fun" activity of stock picking or crypto currency (to hold).
There's also no chance that your 5 year prediction comes true. Crypto sucks for use as a currency, it's way too volatile (and slow) for use in day to day expenditure or as a way to borrow on a loan or credit card.