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Child Item

Beginning to Invest - All questions go here please

iMax

Guys,

Looking for a little bit of info from those more knowledgeable than me.

My five year old daughter has the above sum in her college fund. We've really skimped for it over the years (started before she was born).

Times are getting harder for us economically & it looks like we won't be able to contribute to it like we were (or at all) for the foreseeable future, but I want to keep it growing if at all possible.

It's currently in an AIB kids account where it ears a meager interest rate.

We were thinking of maybe the state solidarity thing or prizebonds (someone's gotta win, right???). IS there anything else we should look at ? No risk is much preferred (as much as anything can be no risk). I know you don't get as high a return, but it's my daughter's future I'm dealing with.

We don't mind it being locked away (probably a good idea in the long run). Also we'd like to be able to capitalise by being able to add to it if possible.

Looking forward to the replies

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Bob Harris

irishlad. wrote: »

When I go to pay captial gains tax on myaccount, I click into 'Make a Payment' and then 'Tax'.

I don't see an option to pay CGT, should there be one?

Send a mail within myaccount requesting you to be set up for paying cgt and they'll do it within 24hrs.

iAcesHigh

Bob Harris wrote: »

Send a mail within myaccount requesting you to be set up for paying cgt and they'll do it within 24hrs.

unfortunately not, they came back to me and sent me paper form to be filled and sent to their physical address...

tamova

Is there anything inherently wrong with using Revolut trading? I've about 6k in stocks on there. I plan on holding for a long time, so I don't really try time the market or anything. There's little/no fees and no currency conversion fees. I'm only interested in blue chip stocks (which are all on NYSE anyway, therefore included in Revolut). I may switch to Degiro once they introduce currency conversion fees in August.

Saudades

What are the pros/cons of investing in an S&P 500 ETF within the next few days? Many reasons to wait? Political? Overpriced?

iAcesHigh

Saudades wrote: »

What are the pros/cons of investing in an S&P 500 ETF within the next few days? Many reasons to wait? Political? Overpriced?

Long term you're quite safe, short term it might be roller-coaster taking into account Covid, US elections, Economic impact of closures etc...

Shedite27

Saudades wrote: »

What are the pros/cons of investing in an S&P 500 ETF within the next few days? Many reasons to wait? Political? Overpriced?

Short term the main con for me is that int includes the whole S&P. Lots of the big S&P companies are completly crippled by Covid, I'd feel the portion of your money being invested in Crusie Lines, Airlines, Hotels etc are just wasted dollars. But as previous poster said, long term they should recover eventually

Timmaay

Saudades wrote: »

What are the pros/cons of investing in an S&P 500 ETF within the next few days? Many reasons to wait? Political? Overpriced?

Your best bet is to "dollar average", which is basically where instead of putting a lump sum of money in at possibly the wrong time (let's say you bought the s&p at like 3300 next week, and it tanks to 2500 the week after, you'll be kicking yourself), instead you put a percentage in across time, and on average you'll smoothen out the peaks and dips. And in terms of waiting, honestly who the hell knows anymore, all logic gone out the window by now, the s&p is as likely to hit 3500 as it is to drop back to like 2500.

iAcesHigh

Timmaay wrote: »

Your best bet is to "dollar average", which is basically where instead of putting a lump sum of money in at possibly the wrong time (let's say you bought the s&p at like 3300 next week, and it tanks to 2500 the week after, you'll be kicking yourself), instead you put a percentage in across time, and on average you'll smoothen out the peaks and dips. And in terms of waiting, honestly who the hell knows anymore, all logic gone out the window by now, the s&p is as likely to hit 3500 as it is to drop back to like 2500.

but as mentioned earlier, main issue here are taxes on ETFs which make dollar averaging extra heavy (and expensive) on paperwork down the line

Saudades

Timmaay wrote: »

Your best bet is to "dollar average"

Thanks, yes that's what I was planning to do. I was actually planning to dollar average every day (Well, Monday to Friday) over perhaps 4 weeks.

Then after that I can just add a little more once a month at pay-day. Perhaps daily doesn't provide enough variance?

iAcesHigh wrote: »

main issue here are taxes on ETFs which make dollar averaging extra heavy (and expensive) on paperwork down the line

I was planning to keep my own records for each transaction recorded on Excel setup with formulas, dates recorded for each purchase, number of units, and cost of each unit, and then use the FIFO method to calculate 41% disposal / 8 year deemed disposal tax.

Though with a bit of luck Micheál Martin will have ETF's moved to the 33% Capital Gains wrapper in the next budget!

Bob24

Saudades wrote: »

Though with a bit of luck Micheál Martin will have ETF's moved to the 33% Capital Gains wrapper in the next budget!

Has there been any noise about this?

Seems pretty unlikely to me ... if anything the government will want to milk us even more.

Shedite27

Bob24 wrote: »

Has there been any noise about this?

Seems pretty unlikely to me ... if anything the government will want to milk us even more.

Nothing concrete, the program for government "contains a commitment to review capital gains tax rates in each budget over the next five-years."

With the current situation I can't see them giving up income

Timmaay

Saudades wrote: »

Thanks, yes that's what I was planning to do. I was actually planning to dollar average every day (Well, Monday to Friday) over perhaps 4 weeks.

Then after that I can just add a little more once a month at pay-day. Perhaps daily doesn't provide enough variance?

Nay I certainly wouldn't be bothered every day across the 4 weeks, I'd more aim for say 1/4 the lump sum once a month for the next 4 months, and after that pick your regular lump sum whether it be every month, quarter or whatever, I certainly wouldn't worry about daily fluctuations.

And all this is coming from personal experience, late Jan was a bad time to lump sum a big amount of money into the stock market lol.

Saudades

Bob24 wrote: »

Has there been any noise about this?

No nothing at all, their manifesto mentioned reduction of capital gains tax from 33% to 25% but that was in January before the virus so likely out the window now. Just seemed like it would have been too big a gap between shares and funds if one was taxed at 25% and the other at 41%.

Bob24

Saudades wrote: »

Thanks, yes that's what I was planning to do. I was actually planning to dollar average every day (Well, Monday to Friday) over perhaps 4 weeks.

Timmaay wrote: »

Nay I certainly wouldn't be bothered every day across the 4 weeks, I'd more aim for say 1/4 the lump sum once a month for the next 4 months, and after that pick your regular lump sum whether it be every month, quarter or whatever, I certainly wouldn't worry about daily fluctuations.

And all this is coming from personal experience, late Jan was a bad time to lump sum a big amount of money into the stock market lol.

Agree it wouldn't be very useful to do it everyday over 4 weeks, but even 4 months could be a short timeline for dollar averaging in the current situation.

@Saudades, IMO it depends on what your investment goal is:
1) if you have a conviction that the market is going up in the next year or 2 and are looking at allocating a portion of your portfolio to bet on this, what Timmaay said makes perfect sense (it means you know there is a risk of you being wrong and you accept it).
2) but if the lump sum we are talking about are life savings to be invested with no specific timeframe/target price, I would dollar cost average over a longer period - maybe at least a year. This is because the situation is very uncertain and a violent market crash in the next couple of months isn't out of the equation (and if it was to happen in 5 months time after investing someone's life savings in the previous 4 months - it would be very hard to stomach). To be clear I am not saying this will necessarily happen or that it should be your base scenario, but with the current volatility and uncertainties wit the virus/economy the probability of it happening is certainly higher than usual - and IMO it means extra care should taken with large lump sums for long term investment.

bfa1509

Held shares in Flatex (owners of Degiro) earlier in the year but got out when the virus hit. Of course the share price went up and up continuously for the last 3 months (now 20% higher). I put in a limit order for €44 a few days ago when it was at 45 in the off chance it would drop 2-3% in the morning. Of course I awake to see my account bloodied as the share price dropped 12% from €47 to €42, filling my order at €44. Just my luck (although I was probably lucky to only take a 5% hit rather than the full 12%). It appears the private share holders sold a proportion of their shares in order to float more of the company publicly and to increase liquidity.

While it has taken a steep hit now, what does this typically mean for the share price in the long term?

Pizzle

Hi everyone.

I was going to start doing a very small amount of investing via Revolut but I'm not fully sure of the tax implications and want to make sure I'm doing everything properly. I had a couple of questions that I was hoping to get some feedback on:

[LIST=2]
[*]Is it correct to assume that I only need to pay CGT when I sell the shares and son't need to do anything (register or declare the value of shares with the Revenue) related to it before then?
[*]If the profit I make is below the personal exemption amount, do I still need to declare this?
[*]Is there anything else you would advise me to do or read to get up to speed on the tax implications?
[/LIST]
Any help greatly appreciated. I've tried to find answers to these questions on the thread but couldn't see anything in the first couple of pages. If there is some other resource that could be useful it would be great if you had a link.

Thanks.

iAcesHigh

Pizzle wrote: »

Hi everyone.

I was going to start doing a very small amount of investing via Revolut but I'm not fully sure of the tax implications and want to make sure I'm doing everything properly. I had a couple of questions that I was hoping to get some feedback on:

[LIST=2]
[*]Is it correct to assume that I only need to pay CGT when I sell the shares and son't need to do anything (register or declare the value of shares with the Revenue) related to it before then?
[*]If the profit I make is below the personal exemption amount, do I still need to declare this?
[*]Is there anything else you would advise me to do or read to get up to speed on the tax implications?
[/LIST]
Any help greatly appreciated. I've tried to find answers to these questions on the thread but couldn't see anything in the first couple of pages. If there is some other resource that could be useful it would be great if you had a link.

Thanks.

1. if you're just buying company shares, that's correct. Nothing to be declared before you cashout
2. even if it's below €1270 you will need to declare it in your tax return
3. if you're just going into company shares, and not ETFs etc. then you can just read through Citizen Info and Revenue pages and you're grand... If you don't understand something you'll easily google further examples that will explain it in more details...

Pizzle

iAcesHigh wrote: »

1. if you're just buying company shares, that's correct. Nothing to be declared before you cashout
2. even if it's below €1270 you will need to declare it in your tax return
3. if you're just going into company shares, and not ETFs etc. then you can just read through Citizen Info and Revenue pages and you're grand... If you don't understand something you'll easily google further examples that will explain it in more details...

That's great. Thanks for the clarification on those points!

Pizzle

In terms of paying CGT, I saw from a previous poster that this is done either through a form (posted) or it might be possible to pay online under "MyAccount".

When a person starts selling shares, do you have to keep track of each individual trade and report/file on that, or do you do it in one large chunk where total taxable income is determined? It seems like it could get messy very quickly with the First In First Out rules.

Currently not planning on selling any shares for the moment (just trying to learn about it by playing around on Revolut) but want to make sure I know what I'm doing in terms of keeping track of buying/selling, etc.

Maybe this would be clearer if I went into "MyAccount" and started looking at the forms there...but I'm a bit slow to do this in case I accidentally register to pay CGT right now!

Taylor365

Pizzle wrote: »

In terms of paying CGT, I saw from a previous poster that this is done either through a form (posted) or it might be possible to pay online under "MyAccount".

When a person starts selling shares, do you have to keep track of each individual trade and report/file on that, or do you do it in one large chunk where total taxable income is determined? It seems like it could get messy very quickly with the First In First Out rules.

Currently not planning on selling any shares for the moment (just trying to learn about it by playing around on Revolut) but want to make sure I know what I'm doing in terms of keeping track of buying/selling, etc.

Maybe this would be clearer if I went into "MyAccount" and started looking at the forms there...but I'm a bit slow to do this in case I accidentally register to pay CGT right now!

AFAIK CGT can only be paid through snail mail.

Degiro will email an end of year report with total gains. Not sure what Revolut do.

Bob24

Taylor365 wrote: »

Degiro will email an end of year report with total gains. Not sure what Revolut do.

Isn’t there something whereby CGT for gains made in the first part of of the year must be pain in December? (i.e. this can’t wait for the yearly report)

Taylor365

Bob24 wrote: »

Isn’t there something whereby CGT for gains made in the first part of of the year must be pain in December? (i.e. this can’t wait for the yearly report)

Correct, paying and filling a tax return are two things i mixed up. Degiro send out a report for Jan to Nov, then another for full year.

Pay 1st half CGT before December 15th
Pay 2nd half CGT before Jan31st of next year
File a return (Form CG1 ) preferably before August 31st of next year

Pizzle

Does anyone know what the process of paying CGT is like for Revolut?

Shedite27

Pizzle wrote: »

Does anyone know what the process of paying CGT is like for Revolut?

CGT is a self declarative tax, so you need to figure out yourself what you owe. Revolut won't do any of the processing/paying for you.

Calculating it via Revolut is a bit painful, if you're doing a lot of transactions. They only export in PDF, so tough to do Excel magic, which I do with Degiro.

Saudades

Anyone here invested with Fundsmith?
Pondering whether to opt for the main T-class fund (GBP) or the SICAV fund (Euro).

The GBP is the main £20b fund managed by Terry Smith. Not really sure if the SICAV (Luxembourg domiciled) is a feeder fund or if it just tracks and replicates the main fund.

The portfolio's are similar but not identical. Returns obviously differ because of currency, but in the last 5 years cumulative performance, the GBP fund increased 148% and the EU fund increased 'only' 90%.

Would it be prudent investing in both 50/50 just to cover bases in case one of GBP or Euro significantly strengthens or devalues in the next few years? Or safer just to stick to Euro?

Jim2007

Saudades wrote: »

Anyone here invested with Fundsmith?
Pondering whether to opt for the main T-class fund (GBP) or the SICAV fund (Euro).

The GBP is the main £20b fund managed by Terry Smith. Not really sure if the SICAV (Luxembourg domiciled) is a feeder fund or if it just tracks and replicates the main fund.

The portfolio's are similar but not identical. Returns obviously differ because of currency, but in the last 5 years cumulative performance, the GBP fund increased 148% and the EU fund increased 'only' 90%.

Would it be prudent investing in both 50/50 just to cover bases in case one of GBP or Euro significantly strengthens or devalues in the next few years? Or safer just to stick to Euro?

Yes very much so, since I got out of the game myself and I mentioned it else where as well. I’m no particularly concerned about the currency since the value of the underlying assets will always be reflected.

The SICA funds are primarily constructed to take advantage of certain tax breaks in Europe, so I don’t know if they are of any advantage to an Irish resident. Here in Switzerland, they are taking over from our secret bank accounts give the poor deposit returns. Returns are paid gross with no questions asked as to the source of funds - but only if you are Swiss.

Saudades

Jim2007 wrote: »

Yes very much so, since I got out of the game myself and I mentioned it else where as well. I’m no particularly concerned about the currency since the value of the underlying assets will always be reflected.

The SICA funds are primarily constructed to take advantage of certain tax breaks in Europe, so I don’t know if they are of any advantage to an Irish resident. Here in Switzerland, they are taking over from our secret bank accounts give the poor deposit returns. Returns are paid gross with no questions asked as to the source of funds - but only if you are Swiss.

Yes I read a lot of folks saying it's only the underlying currency that matters, but there will be a day when I would need to transfer the GBP back into Euro, so if on that day the GBP has recently bombed, that could seriously affect the amount of Euro I could buy back.

On the other hand, maybe the Euro will crash - hence why I'm wondering if it would be prudent to invest 50/50 in both the Sterling and Euro funds just to be safe - unless there's other factors that I'm missing.
The underlying assets are mostly USD unsurprisingly, but there's more invested in GBP stocks than Euro stocks which may explain why the GBP fund has outperformed the SICAV lately.

I would like to read your previous posts about fundsmith and/or 'getting out of the game' but boards is playing up at the moment with an error when I try to search "503 Unfortunately the backend returned an error and could not fulfill this request. Please try again or return to the homepage."
Could you post a link to that post? You seem to know your stuff.

RugbyLover123

Would anyone recommend the MyWallSt app for someone that isn’t that knowledgeable but wants to begin trading/investing? Looks like a good platform to guide and learn but it is subscription.

They seem to use DriveWealth as a broker to? Does anyone have any experience of using it? Or would I be best using something like DeGiro?

Jim2007

RugbyLover123 wrote: »

Would anyone recommend the MyWallSt app for someone that isn’t that knowledgeable but wants to begin trading/investing? Looks like a good platform to guide and learn but it is subscription.

They seem to use DriveWealth as a broker to? Does anyone have any experience of using it? Or would I be best using something like DeGiro?

No experience, but if you are new and want to learn a years subscription to betterinvesting.org would be a very good investment. They are fairly independent and their basic investing philosophy works fairly well in preventing you from making too many mistakes.

A word of warning, be very wary of the way stock pickers calculate their performance, it invariably very overstated.

Shedite27

RugbyLover123 wrote: »

Would anyone recommend the MyWallSt app for someone that isn’t that knowledgeable but wants to begin trading/investing? Looks like a good platform to guide and learn but it is subscription.

They seem to use DriveWealth as a broker to? Does anyone have any experience of using it? Or would I be best using something like DeGiro?

MyWallSt has a load of stuff for free, their Learn app is completely free, as is the blog and the podcast. Really the paid bit is only to see the stock picks.

I haven't used DriveWealth, but they cater to an American audience so might be tailored to that, most on here use Degiro.