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Money market funds - twice the interest on a cash ISA but safe?

With current UK interest rates so low and cash ISA returns correspondingly poor, I am wondering why some of the money market funds aren't getting more attention. Several of them are producing returns of 3.5% and above. Here are a few examples: -

Aberdeen cash fund

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9 Henderson cash fund
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53 Blackrock cash fund
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I've listed the 'Acc' version of these funds as they can, I hear, be used to minimise the tax liability on returns as follows. If you invest cash into an Acc fund, hold it for a while then sell the fund (or part of it) the 'interest' gained can, I believe, be treated as a capital gain, so you can offset it against your CGT allowance (currently around £9k I think) and so most of us would get the 'income' tax free.

With such attractive returns potentially available effectively tax free, even outside an ISA, with no ISA limit, I am thinking this looks very attractive. However what I don't fully understand is whether there is a risk to capital in investing in these funds. The 5-year charts indicate that there hasn't been for some time, but can anyone articulate the risks inherent in these funds?

Jez

Reply to
Jezzer
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Jez, That performance will not continue. Looking at Aberdeen, they have lots of CDs at ~2%. Then note: Additional annual charge of 0.5% + VAT is applied to this fund when held in the Vantage ISA and SIPP. This additional charge is not accounted for in the Total Expense Ratio quoted above.

² Annual saving is not available in the SIPP.

I've become a bit dissillusioned with keeping a collection of funds for SIPP and ISA at H-L. Note they want you in funds for "their" kickback commision. No competitive high rate money market cash offer from them, these days. I'm beginning to think picking individual stocks is the way to go for my H-L SIPP and ISA.

Jim

Reply to
Jim

Jim

Thanks for the reply. The Henderson fund seems to be the best in terms of TER and returns, although I take your point that the returns probably won't stay at the current level, but hey they have some way to come down before matching my current cash returns sitting in my ISA and SIPP since selling the FTSE etc some time back.

Don't forget my point above about the interest in an Acc fund being treated as a capital gain on the sale of the units. Hence, assuming you're not fully using your CGT allowance, you can effectively get the return tax free up to the CGT limit, so don't need to wrap the cash in your ISA or SIPP, assuming you have some free cash outside those vehicles. Thus it's possible to avoid HL's additional 0.5% charge.

I am wondering about the stability of these funds however. They've shown no correlation with the stockmarket, despite the extraordinary circumstances we've seen recently. So can we assume they are as safe as cash, or close to?

Jez

Reply to
Jezzer

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