tug7 wrote:What is the cheapest/ easiest/ best way to buy and own funds & gilts that does not involve a pooled nominee account which all the cheaper platforms that I have looked at want to use for non ISA investments?
The world has transitioned to a era of depository rather than custodial. Deposit money with a bank and it becomes the banks money. Deposit money into a brokerage account and buy some shares and you've transferred money over to a brokerage who buy the shares that you like ... in their name. There are counter-party risks involved in such and I suspect that is the risk you are concerned about. Concentration risk is a major risk factor and having large amounts exposed to such depository risk whilst possibly having low year or year risk, sees that risk increase with time/years (when you're investing for 30+ years much can happen).
Assuming that is along the lines of your thinking ways to reduce that risk is to for instance shift bond (Gilt) risk over to the stock side.
US data PV and instead of 50/50 stock/gilts (bonds), 67/33 stock/cash (T-Bills or cash deposit) reasonably transferred bond risk over to the stock side. You can push that further and at around 80/20 stock/hard Pound currency you might broadly anticipate similar rewards to that of 50/50 stock/bonds. If instead of hard currency you held physical gold then that rotates back in the opposite direction, less stock weighting is required. But that does introduce drift/variance, is less inclined to track comparably from year to year, even though more broadly (multiple years) it does tend to periodically align/cross. 50/50 stock/gold for instance instead of 50/50 stock/gilts (bonds).
When gold is held in the form of legal tender currency, Sovereign/Britannia gold coins, then there's no purchase tax nor capital gains tax, and is physical in-hand (no counter-party risk).
Someone for instance might own their own home, a third of their total wealth, along with a third each in stocks and gold. When the gold is physical then two thirds of their wealth is in-hand, no counter-party risk. If the stock third is divided between a few brokers and funds, then single broker/fund risk is reduced to 11% of total wealth. Not that dissimilar to how much a stock index might decline in a single week at times. Thirds each in land (home), stock, in-hand (gold) was advocated by the Talmud millennia ago with safety/security in mind. Generational wealth also has a mantra a 'a third, a third, a third' in reflection of land, art, gold assets i.e. physical in-hand assets.
Yet another approach is as per Zvi Bodie, who instead of stock prefers 10/90 10x stock/treasury bills and where he secures that 10x leverage via Traded Options (monthly contracts/rebalancing). This provides a feel for along those lines PV where 100% stock is substituted by a third in a 3x stock and two thirds in bonds. For modest tracking you do however to rebalance periodically, something like yearly for 2x, 6 monthly for 3x, monthly for 10x.
Basically rather than totally avoiding depository/nominee you can alleviate the risk via asset allocation in order to reduce that risk down to more acceptable levels of comfort.
