Diversifying Your Portfolio

Sometimes it's worth diversifying your portfolio outside the world of ISAs.  After all, some things can't be held within these accounts : physical gold, silver, property, a lot of foreign shares and...domain names.

Yep, I've been feeling for some years domain names are the ultimate virtual landgrab (more on virtual money such as Bitcoin another day!), but to give you an insight into the kind of domain name portfolio I feel might perform well the next ten years, check this domain name portfolio out.

Selftrade ISA Offering - £175 ISA bonus act before 30th April

Selftrade are offering a pretty impressive ISA deal this year, whereby if you invest the full £10,500 in their ISA account by 30th April 2010, you get 10 free trades worth a total of £125 to use during May.

Not only that, but you can boost that by a further £50 by getting me to recommend you. Obviously, I'm more than happy to do this. You can do that by emailing me at alan@doityourselfisa.co.uk using the mail address matching that you want to apply for the account in.

All I can say is, if you're interested act as soon possible. This great offer dies on 1st May 2010. Best ISA offer I've seen so far this new tax year, for sure. In the interests of disclosure I'm happy to reveal that this is where my new ISA money is headed this year, for sure.

The AIGA saga

One of my key recommendations in my ISA Book is the diverse range of stockmarket-listed ETFs run by ETFSecurities. Reason being, that these inventive ETFs allow you to invest in the indexes tracking a wide range of commodities not normally accessible to normal investors such as ourselves. That includes such common staples as Corn, Wheat, Sugar, Cotton, Oil, Gold and Silver.

Long-term, as governments pump more money into the economy, the price of commodities in these devalued national currencies can only rise. And before you think it's only me saying this, then perhaps you'll listen to the opinion of uber-investor Jim Rogers, in his book Hot Commodities.

Well, shock, horror, this week, as AIG, the huge US insurance company faced financial problems of its own. Ah, but what's this got to do with the price of wheat, you may ask? Unfortunately, AIG manages the ETF soft commodity (Wheat, Livestock, etc.) ETFs on behalf of ETF Securites. A complex arrangement that is hard to follow, and created much uncertainty as to whether we'd even get our money back if AIG went under.

When they resume trading, we can probably expect mass redemptions of these ETFs. Here's a contrarian opportunity of ever I saw it. Funds at the ready, because with so many eager sellers, it could be worth taking a punt, because the US Government has already shown an intense desire not to let AIG fail, and anyway, there is guarantee that we would even lose our money if they did. With any luck, we'll see these ETFs trading at huge discounts to NAV. I think it's worth taking a risk, especially since the alternative is British pounds (for me), or exposing myself to the vagaries and fluctuations of our ailing economy through stocks.

SUCCESSFUL TAX FREE ISA INVESTING

Time for a sneak inside look at what's covered by the new book SUCCESSFUL TAX FREE ISA INVESTING, by ALAN DUNWIDDIE. Here's the contents page, to give you some idea what it covers :-

• Introduction
• About Isas
• Financial Advisors
• Isas and the Tax-free Myth
• Inflation
• Cash Isas
• Investing in Shares
• Choosing a Broker
• Unit Trust Isas
• Investment Trust Isas
• Exchange-Traded Fund Isas
• Commodity Isas
• Gold Isas
• Bond Isas
• Property Isas
• With-Profits Isas
• Isa Mortgages
• The Future Of Isas
• Summary
• Recommended Resources
• Official Inland Revenue Guidance on Isas

Site rejig...Scientific Advertising

Okay, so I'm no pro, but I think my book at Do it Yourself ISA is well and truly worth the meagre £4.95 price, considering it can save most investors an awful lot of cash.

So I rejigged the sites to hopefully present more of the positives correctly.

Check it out at :-

www.doityourselfisa.co.uk
www.shareisa.co.uk
www.investmenttrustisa.co.uk
www.unittrustisa.co.uk
www.unitinvestmenttrust.co.uk

Or just go ahead and preview (then hopefully buy...but hey, even if you don't I wish you well with your investing decisions.

You can buy or preview it here.