The Lemon Fool

Yes, it should be possible to buy gilts with appropriate maturity dates from any decent broker. Where you can’t do it online, I’ve generally still been charged the online dealing fee.
However, you might also want to think about a short ladder of fixed interest savings - at the moment you can get about 2.5% on a five year bond Best Buy.

AleisterCrowley wrote:Why not? Any decent online broker will allow you to trade in Gilts

HSDL (Halifax) insist you do it by 'phone rather than online - or this was the case when I asked a year or two back.
From memory one gets stung £25 for 'phone trades

(must be an ETF that does a similar job???)

I must admit that I haven't tried, and the last time I dealt with Gilts was for my mother-in-law through the Post Office on the National Savings register, in 1993.

TJH

Mercenary wrote: Many thanks. Is such a UK bond ladder possible for the retail investor to construct in the UK? If so, via whom and how?

In its simplest form you just buy individual bonds through whatever Broker will sell them to you. For a 10 year ladder, you choose 10 of them with maturity dates of each calendar year. It's just buying an individual bond 10 times.

Mostly they would require phone dealing rather than online.

What difference is there between a 5yr gilt ladder and 5yr term accounts from b socs? I appreciate you have the gov as backer for gilts, but not many would exceed the protected levels in a b soc.

As always thanks in advance,

SB.

Snowbadger wrote:What difference is there between a 5yr gilt ladder and 5yr term accounts from b socs?

If you take out a 5 year term account, isn't your money locked for 5 years? With a ladder you get a maturity every year for reinvestment. It also might be easier to get the cash from gilts if you don't have to give notice.

Thanks Alaric,

I thought the idea of a ladder was you had 1,2,3,4,and 5yr bond for example, then each year you have a bond maturing which you then invest in another five year bond gaining access to the higher rates. After five years you are effectively holding all 5yr bonds with annual access if things go pear shaped.
So how do gilts improve on this model?

Cheers Inv35t,
I think I might need a few days to digest your answer. I've never really understood gilts, bonds, etc and hence I've used a ladder of term accounts. After the effort you have made I feel I owe it to you to get to grips and respond accordingly.


Many thanks,

SB