Which Fund Shop?

[sagarich]

I'm looking to put 6-7k into an S&S ISA long term, with a few funds in mind.

First thought was H&L, on the surface they have a good portal with lots of useful research, but fees seem a little high.

I'm now edging towards Fidelity @ 0.35% under 7.5k.

Any others I should be considering?

[XJ75]

I use Fidelity, but only because my employer requires me to choose a platform from an approved list, and Fidelity is the best of a bad bunch.

They have had some serious IT issues lately, their app was unable to display investment performance for some time (they literally fixed it in the last week or so, it was unavailable for a couple of months).

I also transferred out my pension, and now it shows that transfer out in the total return, so it's showing my portfolio having a huge loss, when actually all the investments I still have in the account are in profit. I called them about this and they said there is nothing they can do.

If you want any remotely complex P&L reporting, Fidelity give you pretty much nothing. All I can get is the inception-to-date P&L for individual investments. They can't give you YTD P&L for the portfolio or any annualised return figures (they used to offer AR, but it disappeared).

In terms of fund choice and costs they are OK, but their software is very limited. Admittedly I don't have anything to compare it to, but Fidelity seems to be lacking some pretty basic features IMO.

[sagarich]

XJ75 said:

I use Fidelity, but only because my employer requires me to choose a platform from an approved list, and Fidelity is the best of a bad bunch.

They have had some serious IT issues lately, their app was unable to display investment performance for some time (they literally fixed it in the last week or so, it was unavailable for a couple of months).

I also transferred out my pension, and now it shows that transfer out in the total return, so it's showing my portfolio having a huge loss, when actually all the investments I still have in the account are in profit. I called them about this and they said there is nothing they can do.

If you want any remotely complex P&L reporting, Fidelity give you pretty much nothing. All I can get is the inception-to-date P&L for individual investments. They can't give you YTD P&L for the portfolio or any annualised return figures (they used to offer AR, but it disappeared).

In terms of fund choice and costs they are OK, but their software is very limited. Admittedly I don't have anything to compare it to, but Fidelity seems to be lacking some pretty basic features IMO.

Thanks for detailing your experience, much appreciated , their IT issues don’t fill me with much confidence... nor does their reporting.

[rustyuk]

I'm with Alliance Trust - don't like the platform much but it's cheap. However, they don't have same volume of funds or shares available as H & L

[Craikeybaby]

On the otherhand, I think Fidelity are OK. I went through Cavendish Online and the fees for Fidelity were lower. Monevator had a good comparison when I was looking.

[swatches]

Charles Stanley Direct is 0.25% and worth a look for the portfolio size.
Cavendish on Fidelity is the same, but more hassle IMO.

[sagarich]

Thanks, will take a look at Charles Stanley.

[xeny]

There's a useful list here:

http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-br...

With a tool that will calculate the cheapest choice automatically, based on portfolio size and trading frequency.

[sagarich]

xeny said:

There's a useful list here:

http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-br...

With a tool that will calculate the cheapest choice automatically, based on portfolio size and trading frequency.

Thanks, very handy.