Advantages: Efficient, reliable and reasonable value Disadvantages: No obvious problems
(which, let's face it, is as much as most small investors could manage given the costs of share-dealing etc.), you can pool your money with that of hundreds or thousands of others into one large fund. This fund is then run by a professional manager or company such as Nationwide Unit TrustManagers (or NUTM for short). The advantages are that you have the benefits of investing in a whole range of equities but can do so at very limited cost with very small sums of money.
There are a great many such companies and managers out there, so don't take it from this opinion that NUTM is by far the best (nor that it is among the lower end of the scale). That judgement will to a large extent depend on your circumstances.
Now, I'm not, as I said above, going to give an opinion on the quality of the investment strategies adopted by NUTM - I'm not ...
Hargreaves lansdown have lost us thousands of pounds in their portfoliomanagement service, we invested our life savings with them, they lost thousands off our pensions and isa products, please beware when investing with them. We were given the totally wrong advice for a short time to retirement, they invested our money in equities which was wrong. The salesmen who came to see us gave us wrong information and completely mislead us. in our opinion customers should be very cautious when listening to their advisers, they tell such a good story of other clients who are pleased with their investments, none regarding ones who are very dissatisfied, their charges are very high and this eats into any investment especially pensions, they try and tell people to invest in Sipps, but unless you know about stock and shares you can lose a lot ...
Advantages: Management Disadvantages: current climate
I have just completed extensive research into this area, and have come to the conclusion that the aberdeen global growth team are second to none. Let us take for example the aberdeen global growth technology fund, with its past record second to none. In Mr John Pullar Strecker they have a quality manager with a wealth of experience. Recently the fund has changed its investment objectives to allow it to tap a growth in other countires in addition to the current technology powerhouse, the U.S.A. In the current climate, growth is somewhat minimal due to the rapid slowdown in the U.S economy, however, many expect the tide to turn in the fourth quarter of this year. Technology is here to stay, and if you want to get a part of it, this fund is for you ! ...
