Investing | How to Choose Funds: Active vs Passive, ETFs & Fees

Investing · Decisions — part of the find your point (fyp) autumn programme.

You have decided to invest, or you already have. The harder question is which funds, how many, and how to tell a good one from an expensive one.

Ninety minutes, ten people, plain English, numbers on paper. Nothing about what you should buy.

WHAT WE COVER

• Active or passive — what each is really selling you, and what the long-run independent record says about how often the promise is kept.

• What an ETF has become. Strategies that used to sit behind a hedge fund’s door are now sold to anyone for very little. What in that is a genuine gift, and what is repackaging with a new label.

• The families — factor, sector, regional, income, leveraged, structured. What each is built to do, and what each has actually delivered for the risk taken to get it.

• What you really pay. The platform bill and the fund bill are separate. And charges compound against you every year, on a balance that keeps getting bigger, while returns compound for you.

• How many funds is enough. Where spreading your money stops paying — and how a broad, dull, cheap centre plus a small deliberate edge actually works in practice.

THEN THE QUIZ

What do you think you know about funds — how they work, what they cost, which of two is the better buy? Votes first, answers after. The arguments the room makes are most of the teaching.

You leave with a shape on paper: how many funds, what the centre is for, what the edge is for, and what it costs you in a year.

This is a Decisions session. It assumes you know roughly what a share, a bond and a fund are. If those words are still new, a Foundations session is the better room — same subjects, one floor down.

WALK IN: invested already, or about to be. No previous session needed.

WALK OUT: with a shape rather than a shortlist.

Doors from 18:15 · session 18:30–20:00 · ten seats · £10.

Every find your point session sits at one of three levels: Foundations — assumes no prior knowledge · Decisions — assumes the basics and weighs up the choices · Optimise — improves what you already have. This session is Decisions.

Led by Rahul — ex-Wall Street and City credit trader; FCA-registered investment adviser until 2009.

find your point is a trading name of Kibo Integral Tech Limited (Co. No. 15322474)

Generic financial education — not personal financial advice.

Not yet authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Direct Authorisation in progress.

This session is financial education, not financial advice — nothing in it is a recommendation, and all figures are illustrations, not promises.