Reading the Financial Pages for Dummies®

Chapter 14. Investing in Funds and Trusts

In This Chapter

• Handing things over to an expert

• Locating information on trusts and funds

• Differentiating between unit trusts and investment trusts

No matter how good your own stock-picking skills may be, there are probably going to be some times and some situations where you'll probably want to leave the choices to somebody else. Leaving another person in charge of your savings means that you're free to get on with your life and do the things you want to with your time, instead of spending every waking moment wondering whether the Nikkei is heading down the tubes or the FTSE's being overvalued.

Anyway, of course, you already do employ professional fund managers to run your investments on your behalf. Your pension funds are a prime example of letting somebody else do the legwork – and let's remember that, even if your employer runs your pension scheme, it's a professional manager who's actually investing your cash. As for those guaranteed income bonds you bought last year – to say nothing of your endowment mortgage – none of them would function at all without somebody at the controls to get on with the daily grind of selecting and monitoring the things that will go into your portfolio.

Employing a Professional Pilot

But I'm assuming, for the moment, that you rather enjoy the thrill of the chase, and that your investing record so far hasn't been so terrible as to make you think that you really ought to give up and do something different. What, you ...