Investment and the 'Racing Fairy'

Posted on 2 April 2012 by Douglas Chadwick

Again the ISA season circus has just about completed its ritual of advertising frenzy, with the final date for this years ISA purchase being April 5th. 

Many of the investment managers have spent vast sums of money telling you how their funds have outperformed their competition over carefully selected periods of time spread over one, three, or five years. Because of this you should place your money with them going forward, presumably because the past forecasts the future. 

Then you must sit passively and watch your investment hopefully go up. Unfortunately, should it go down, the same manager will still want you to sit passively and leave your investment with him whilst he puts things right. The questions that should be asked is, can he, and should you?

If you and he were fortunate enough to be spending the day at the races at Ascot, and the 'Racing Fairy' had said you can switch horses mid-race when you can see which horse is in front, can you imagine for one second that this manager would stay loyal to his original horse selection? Yet this is what he expects you to do with your ISA selection! 

Now I am not suggesting for one second that your savings and retirement money should be likened to a horse racing bet - but that is the approach of the investment industry. However this analogy has some strength for other reasons.  If you had made this years ISA investment via one of the many fund platforms such as Interactive Investor, Fidelity, Hargreaves Lansdowne etc., then you would have been able to switch your choice as the performing funds became obvious. This switch could have been made for very little cost, so why wouldn't you want to stay with the front running "horse and jockey"? 

There is no end to this investment race as long as you remain invested. You can switch between funds as many times as you feel is necessary. All you need is good accurate regular clear performance information on the funds that are available to you, and that is provided by Saltydog Investor.