ISA

[Andrew]

Halma £2.20 (2009) -> £20 (2020) plus dividends WH Smith £3.50(2009) -> £16 (2020) plus huge dividends Scottish Mortgage £1.40 (2009) -> £5.70 (2020) plus dividends Avon Rubber 39p (2009) -> £26 (2020) plus dividends GKN 40p (2009) -> £4.80 when bought by Melrose PRU £2.00 (2009) -> £20 (2018) but now split into PRU and M&G Greggs £4 (2013) -> £20 (2020)

Last years stars were 3I and Aveva

Aveva £8 (2009) -> £52 (2020) plus dividends, plus £10/share extra payment from Schneider SA when they merged in 2018.

But on the downside, the noughties was a bad time to hold banks and supermarkets, while Oil company share prices are dictated by the £/$ exchange rate, and the oil price which is determined by regular skirmishes between Russia, USA and Saudi (plus the state of the world economy).

[Jethro_uk]

SWMBO has reminded me it was the "3rd" type of ISA after S&S and plain cash - a Life ISA ?

It was with LivVic.

SWMBO also had a S&S ISA set up the same time, and over the years it has outperformed everything. It's currently still well ahead - and she's cashed a bit in a few times.

Mind you, for returns, nothing can touch the BitCoin I bought when doing research for my last job. I spent £25, and having used about £300 from it, I still have over £300 left. If only I'd put a bit more in (as every losing investor bewails ....)

[Andrew]

Lifetime ISA ?.

Was it one of these -

This doesn't sound like whatever you invested in. You descrption has all the hallmarks of a 'structured investment product', which has no underlying investments. These are a gamble, because at a fixed date in the future, you will get a percentage (and never 100%) of the FSTE100 gain over the period. Bad news if you started at a high level of the FTSE100 (and many people were sucked in at the top of the DOTCOM boom), followed by years of recovery and another correction just as the 'maturity date' arrives. Even worse, during the 2008 crisis many of these products never paid out at all because the counterparties (eg Leman brothers, AIG) had gone bust.

They are the 'investment' version of 'Over 50's guaranteed funeral plans'. Avoid both like the plague.

Liverpool Victoria ?. They are called LV= these days.

Now that really IS a gamble. Lots of people have paid money to scam sites who provide them with fake websites showing how well their 'investment' is doing, and nagging them to put more money in, but as soon as any withdrawals are attempted, the website vanishes and the phone goes dead.

£25 is about all you should ever put into anything like this.

[Jethro_uk]

Which is why it was :)

[alan_m]

There were some very dubious "heads we win, tails you lose" fixed term products on offer. I seem to remember one I rejected based on the share price alone and with a fixed maturity date. It was only based on the buy and sell price of the shares at the relevant dates and didn't include a share of any dividends that may/will have been paid over the years.

After the banking crash there were also some products that guaranteed that you would never lose any of the capital amount invested in stocks and shares funds. Again based on a fixed number of years with most of the potential gains going to the fund provider. The cynic in me says that if they were offering this product it was at a low risk to them.

I have been putting money into share based PEP and ISA funds for for many years. I have been fairly lucky in my investments by trying to avoid buying at a market high and waiting for the doom and gloom merchants to bring down share prices. Now that I've retired I'm starting to look at spending some (a lot) of this money but I can put off cashing in my PEPs and ISAs for a while.

[Theo]

No, those are recent things.

There were (Life) 'Insurance ISAs' which I think were smoke-and-mirrors from the same place as endowment mortgages and with-profits funds. I don't know exactly how they worked.

+1 Although there have occasionally been good ones, most are junk. Especially the ones advertised to retail customers.

Theo