Performance is one of the main considerations for investors when choosing which stocks and shares ISA (individual savings account) to invest in – while it shouldn’t be your only consideration, you do want some insight into how well your chosen provider has managed its ready-made portfolios in the past before you invest in one. There are a few different types of portfolio available, including income, growth, low risk, high risk and ethical.
Therefore, you should also take into account factors like your attitude to risk and the types of investments you want access to. If you think you’d prefer to choose the individual investments yourself, you can compare stocks and shares ISAs, but the performance will depend on your choice of investments.
The best performing stocks and shares ISA so far in 2024 is Nutmeg Fixed Allocation risk level 5, returning approximately 14.56%.
The best performing stocks and shares ISA over the last year is Nutmeg Fixed Allocation risk level 5, returning approximately 11.13%.
When looking at the 5 year returns, the best performing stocks and shares ISA is InvestEngine Growth Portfolio risk level 10, with returns of approximately 53.70%.
These rankings are worked out using the current underlying investments that make up each portfolio, so they won’t reflect recent changes or take into account the performance of investments that are no longer a part of the portfolio.
All investing should be regarded as longer term. The value of your investments can go up and down, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. If you’re not sure which investments are right for you, please seek out a financial adviser. Capital at risk.
In order to get historical and live performance, we’ve tracked the performance of the investments held in each portfolio. We’ve done this by splitting each ready made portfolio into each of their underlying investments, which are typically exchange-traded funds.
This is designed to give you some general information about how each portfolio performs. Some portfolios are fully managed or managed annually and may hold different investments today compared with yesterday or a year ago, so this might not completely reflect the performance shown on the provider websites.
Rising interest rates on savings accounts make it tempting to opt for guaranteed interest rates instead of investing your funds into stocks and shares, however it’s worth noting that these rates still aren’t keeping up with inflation, so you’re still losing money in real terms.
A 5% savings rate may have seemed pretty appealing a few years ago, but once you think about it in the context of living costs it becomes less so.
Performance shouldn’t be your only consideration when choosing which portfolio to invest in. You can’t guarantee that the chosen portfolio will perform in the same way in the future that it did in the past, so you should do your own research into the underlying investments in a portfolio to make sure you’re aligned with them.
Risk is another thing to take into account — you might be tempted to choose the highest risk portfolio because it appears to get you the highest potential return, but you want to ensure that you’re not choosing something riskier than you can tolerate. Some providers have a risk assessment quiz that can help you identify whether you’re looking for low, medium or high risk portfolios.
In addition, consider whether you’d like an income portfolio or a growth portfolio.
Income portfolios will pay out an income regularly and would work for you if you’re looking to receive a regular income from your investments. Meanwhile growth portfolios will reinvest any dividends, so are designed to grow over time.
All investing should be regarded as longer term. The value of your investments can go up and down, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. If you’re not sure which investments are right for you, please seek out a financial adviser. Capital at risk.
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