What caught my eye this week.

Investing in riskier asset classes usually delivers higher returns in the long-term – unless you’re putting money into emerging markets as opposed to developed ones.

Economic shocks are more important to investors than geopolitics – unless the politicians turn to global war.

Geographic diversification has improved your return profile – unless you were a domestic investor in the US, Mexico, South Africa, or [checks notes] Chile.

Just a few of the (paraphrased) insights I gleaned from skimming the new UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook.

When I first encountered this annual stats smorgasbord from professors Dimson, Marsh, and Staunton 20 years ago – when it was the Credit Suisse Yearbook – it seemed like something out of J.K. Rowling.

Here were the secrets of the investment universe, compiled into one handy tome!

But subsequent years have shown again and again that past is only partially prologue in our particular fantasy realm. (Negative interest rates, anyone?)

All the same, I’ll always have a read of the Yearbook. Even the PDF summary is packed with morsels such as:

Since 1900, equities and bonds have on several occasions lost more than 70% in real terms.

Yet a 60:40 equity:bond blend has never declined more than 50%.

It’s just that after nearly three decades in the game, I see a statistic like that and think, “I suppose it’s overdue then…”

Have a great weekend.

[continue reading…]

^{Disclosure: Links to platforms may be affiliate links, where we may earn a commission. This article is not personal financial advice. When investing, your capital is at risk and you may get back less than invested. With commission-free brokers other fees may apply. See terms and fees. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.}

What is the cheapest stocks and shares ISA available?

The investing world can be complicated, but this time we have a simple answer for you.

Right now the cheapest stocks and shares ISA is the DIY option from InvestEngine.

InvestEngine is the lowest cost stocks and shares ISA on the market because right now it costs nothing.

Zip! Nada!

Now that’s my kind of price range!

Read on for more about InvestEngine’s share ISA.

Cheapest stocks and shares ISA: good to knows

InvestEngine’s ISA costs zero for annual fees, dealing charges, FX fees, entry/exit levies and most of the other multi-headed investment costs that snap at our wallets like a financially-incentivised Hydra. (It’s little known that the Ancient Greek polycephalic snake-beast was on a bonus scheme. Fifty drachma per hero slain.)

The only costs you will pay are the usual Total Expense Ratio / Ongoing Charge management fees that must be borne when investing in any fund, plus trading spreads. So far, so standard.

The platform’s downside is that its range of ETFs is more restricted than costlier platforms, and you can only trade at fixed times per day.

Frankly though, I think that’s a reasonable trade-off. Especially because you can easily create a good investment portfolio from the ETFs available.

Read our full InvestEngine review. We like it. Just make sure you choose the DIY ISA, not the managed one.

Our only concern is how long can the service remain free?

We’ve previously investigated how zero commission brokers make their money. In InvestEngine’s case, it’s mostly hoping you’ll opt for its paid managed offering.

Cheapest stocks and shares ISA: alternatives

There are plenty of other commission-free brokers out there now including Freetrade, Lightyear, Prosper, Trading 212, and IG. Prosper and InvestEngine don’t charge FX fees, the rest do.

This piece explains how you can avoid FX fees using ETFs.

Some Trading 212 users also report paying higher bid-offer spreads on their trades than may be the case on other platforms.

It’s very hard for us to know if they’re right, but no platform can afford to offer its services for free. They all have to make money somehow. They will usually tell you how they do it if you search: “How does ‘Broker X’ make money?”

Cheap stocks and shares ISA hack

What if InvestEngine’s prices creep up, or you don’t like its pool of ETFs, or you want an alternative because you’re concerned about the FSCS investor compensation limit of £85,000?

In that event let’s recap our cheap stocks and shares ISA hack. It still delivers tax shelter satisfaction for an exceptionally low cost.

Here’s how the hack works:

• You begin by drip-feeding into your stocks and shares ISA with the best-value percentage-fee broker on the market.
• Once your ISA is full you transfer it to the cheapest flat-fee broker.
• You don’t buy and sell your investments at the flat-fee broker. You only trade (for zero commission) on your percentage-fee platform.
• In the new tax year, you open a fresh stocks and shares ISA with the percentage-fee broker.
• Rinse and repeat.

You now enjoy a best-of-both worlds deal that takes advantage of the brokerage industry’s niche marketing strategies.

Percentage-fee platforms offer the best terms to small investors. They tend to rake it in once your account swells beyond £25,000 to £50,000. They’re relying on your inertia.

Flat-fee brokers offer good rates to large investors. They hope to make it up in trading fees. They’re relying on high rollers who treat their portfolios like a night at the casino.

You can arbitrage these cost models, provided you’re active in transferring your ISA and then near-comatose once you’ve parked it at your long-stay platform.

Cheap stocks and shares ISA hack in action

AJ Bell Dodl offers the cheapest percentage fee stocks and shares ISA.

It charges 0.15% on the value of your assets (£1 per month minimum) and zero for trading fees. ¹

Were you to drip-feed your ISA allowance in evenly (£1,666 every month), you’d pay approximately £18 in platform fees for the year.

Leave your assets with Dodl forever though and it’ll keep charging 0.15%, which will add up. For example, you’ll pay £150 per year when your account has accumulated £100,000.

But you’re not going to hang around.

Instead, you transfer your ISA to the most convenient flat-fee platform for long-term stashing. There’s a few choices but the cheapest is Scottish Widows Share Dealing (formerly iWeb).

Scottish Widows charges a quite reasonable £0 for platform fees.

Dealing commission is much less competitive at £5 a throw. But we’re not trading there so we plan to pay pretty much zero pounds to Scottish Widows.

• Total cost of your stocks and shares ISA per year = £18 approx. 

Not bad! Better still, Dodl currently waives its fees for the first 12 months when you open a stocks and shares ISA. (Dodl calls it an ‘investment ISA’.)

Once your ISA is full, just transfer it out. You can do so whenever you like – for example after you’ve paid in your last contribution during the current tax year.

Open a fresh stocks and shares ISA with Dodl on new tax year day (6 April) while your old one is lodged with Scottish Widows, gratis.

Before you transfer, make sure your Dodl portfolio holdings are tradable at Scottish Widows.

You don’t want to have to sell out of the market and then buy your portfolio again when it arrives at its new home.

Even if you’ve opened other ISAs this tax year, you can still activate a new stocks and shares ISA with Scottish Widows.

Arguably, you can do so even if you’ve maxed out your annual ISA allowance, as Scottish Widows doesn’t require you to fund your stocks and shares ISA with it.

Low-cost stocks and shares ISA: alternatives to Dodl

Dodl is AJ Bell’s spin-off app-only brand. The snag – apart from that app-only business – is its investment list is quite restricted.

The essentials are all there: a good global tracker fund, government bond funds, a gold fund, and money market option. But you’re not exactly spoilt for choice.

To access a wider range of funds check out:

• Barclays Smart Investor
• HSBC Global Investment Centre (HSBC funds only)
• Trinity Bridge

All three charge 0.25% on the value of your assets and nothing for trading fees – so long as you stick to investing in funds.

• Total cost of your stocks and shares ISA per year = £27 approx. 

You’ll incur trading fees if you stray into other investment types.

Alternatives to Scottish Widows

You’d expect to pay £36 a year for your investment ISA at Halifax or Lloyds Share Dealing. (They’re the same firm).

Trades cost extra at these brokers – but you’ll do your buying and selling at Dodl.

Sitting on a £20,000 investment ISA at Dodl costs you £30 a year alone. Plus another £18 on top as you build up your current tax year’s ISA.

Still, the bottom line is that InvestEngine and (other zero-commission brokers) offer the cheapest stocks and shares ISA option. The Dodl / Scottish Widows combo places second in most scenarios if you make monthly trades.

The other main compromise with Scottish Widows is its website is basic. Reviews on the likes of Trustpilot are distinctly average.

It’s a bare bones offering so don’t rock up expecting five-star customer service.

But I’ve personally dealt with what was iWeb for many years and found it to be perfectly acceptable. Plenty of Monevator readers say the same.

Note: accounts held with Halifax / Bank Of Scotland, Lloyds Bank, and Scottish Widows count as one for the purposes of the FSCS investment protection scheme.

Look mum, no transfers

If you hate the idea of filling in transfer forms then you can make the entire hack work at a slightly higher cost at Fidelity:

• Buy funds monthly for zero trading fees while racking up platform fees at 0.35% per annum.
• Once you hit the breakeven point, sell your funds and buy as few ETFs as possible to reconstitute your portfolio at £7.50 a trade.
• Fidelity caps ETF fees at £90 per year.
• Beware: you have to buy funds monthly using Fidelity’s regular savings plan to enjoy the 0.35% charge. Otherwise, they’ll smack you up with a £7.50 a month minimum fee.

If you can invest monthly, there’s no need to worry about ISA transfers with this scheme. The entire dosey-doe happens within your Fidelity stocks and shares ISAs.

It works because Fidelity act as a percentage-fee/zero commission broker with funds, and a flat-fee broker with ETFs.

Do it all with Scottish Widows

Yet another option is to hold your ISA with Scottish Widows and only ever buy monthly using its regular investment plan.

• Total cost of your stocks and shares ISA per year = £0

You will incur dealing fees at £5 per trade if you ever want to sell a holding – for example to rebalance. But this is still a great option if you’re as active as a koala after a heavy lunch. ²

For cheap fund and ETF ideas check out our low-cost index fund page.

Tidying up the loose ends

All the cheap stocks and shares ISA options laid out above handle ISA transfers free of charge.

You need to transfer your investments in specie (so they’re not sold to cash) to avoid paying dealing fees to your flat fee broker at the other end.

In Specie or re-registration transfers mean you don’t have to worry about being out of the market either.

Check your new broker offers the same funds and ETFs as your old one.

Invest in accumulation funds and ETFs from the beginning. This will save you paying to reinvest dividends at the flat-rate broker.

I’ve ignored rebalancing costs once you’re all parked up at your cheap platform. A small investor should be able to rebalance with new money. Anyone with an embarrassment of riches can set their rebalancing alarm to once every two or three years. That gives you just as good a chance of being up on the deal as any other rebalancing method.

Or you could invest everything in a Vanguard LifeStrategy fund. LifeStrategy is a multi-asset fund that takes care of rebalancing for you.

Either way, rest assured this manoeuvre does not contravene the stocks and shares ISA rules:

• You can have as many stocks and shares ISAs as you like.
• Transferring old ISA money or assets does not use up your ISA allowance for the current tax year. 
• So every tax year, you can open a new ISA at the percentage-fee broker, and ship last year’s ISA to the flat-free broker.
• You can transfer any amount of your previous years’ ISA’s value. You can transfer the whole lot into one ISA, or transfer a portion of it into several ISAs, or any other combo you desire.

Read more on stocks and shares ISA transfers.

See how to calculate your cheapest platform option.

Our broker comparison table tracks the UK’s best platforms.

Cost shavings

If you truly want the cheapest stocks and shares ISA possible then you’ll need to factor in the cost of the low-cost index funds and ETFs available on any platform versus those available through Dodl.

Paying slightly higher OCFs than necessary could overwhelm your platform fee / dealing fee savings.

Also, none of this takes into account the value of your time spent filling in forms. Although when you’re getting this anal then maybe that’s a net positive. (A person’s gotta have a hobby!)

Take it steady,

The Accumulator

Note: this article on the cheapest stocks and shares ISA was updated in Spring 2026. Comments below are kept for posterity and general interest but may refer to old charging schemes, so please check when they were posted.

1. You pay zero for trading ETFs as long as you accept the fixed daily trading times.[↩]
2. Hat tip to Monevator reader Jon Snow for pointing out the Scottish Widows regular investment hack.[↩]

I have devised a new strategy for beating the stock market. All you have to do is own gold. Because gold has outperformed World equities for the past 30 years for UK investors!

Surprised? Well check out the annualised returns:

Time horizon	Gold (%)	World equities (%)
One year	40.2	9.1
Five years	11.4	7.2
Ten years	11.9	9.6
20 years	9.2	6.7
30 years	6.1	6

Data from The London Bullion Market Association, and MSCI. February 2026. All returns quoted in this article are inflation-adjusted total returns (GBP).

Gold is killing equities by four percentage points a year for the past five years. Though that’s a bit short term for my liking – so how about 2.5 percentage points a year for 20 years?

That’s a lot. It looks like this:

Granted, the return differential is marginal if you go back 30 years: 6.1% gold plays 6% equities. But gold is still ahead.

Plus it’s having an awesome year to date!

If gold keeps going, or the so-called AI bubble pops, then the yellow metal’s lead will spread further back into the historical record like an ink stain soaking through paper.

How long is the long term?

By the yardstick of the average mortal investor, 30 years is a pretty compelling time horizon. It certainly sounds like a long stretch for one asset to have the whip hand, no?

Don’t these numbers also call into question that story about gold basically being a shiny Ponzi scheme?

Well yes, I do think that view is too dismissive. I believe gold is worthy of its place in our portfolios.

But in my opinion the long-run performance figures above are more misleading than clarifying.

It’s not because gold beats equities that it’s useful. It’s because it repeatedly rides to the rescue when stock investors are in despair.

Gold also has a penchant for coming good during periods of uncertainty not unlike the one we’re living through now…

Golden years

The first thing to note though is that gold’s returns are highly sensitive to your chosen start date, which muddies the waters no end.

Here are three reasonable long-term baselines for comparing gold against other assets:

Time horizon	Gold (%)	World equities (%)	Baseline
51 years	2.8	6.8	Gold price fully liberated in 1975
56 years	4.8	5.2	MSCI World Index inception
126 years	1.4	5.6	Dawn of the 20th Century

​​Inflation-adjusted annualised total returns (GBP).

If I wanted to press the case against gold then I’d quote the 126-year timeline above, and neglect to mention the price was heavily regulated before the shackles finally came off in 1975.

On the other hand, if I was a total gold bug then I’d shout about gold and equities being neck-and-neck over 56 years.

Pick the compromise date of 1975 though and order is restored. Gold has some value as a minor diversifier, while equities remain paramount.

But their relationship is really more complex than that – and a fortuitous one for investors.

Sheer doubloon-acy

The next thing to put on the table is the 31-year mega gold drawdown:

Gold sank 78.3% over 19 years from 1980 until 1999. Buyers sucked in by gold’s 77.6% gain in 1979 (98% nominal!) didn’t break even again until 2011.

That loss weighs heavily on gold’s track record. It distorts average returns around it like a black hole bends light.

So if I pick a long-term comparison date that veers too close to that event horizon, then gold looks weak.

On the other hand, gold’s average return ticks up when observed at sufficient distance from the super-massive scary-thing pressing upon investing space-time.

Both outcomes are true, relative to the observer – as the next chart shows:

Trend lines show ​​inflation-adjusted cumulative total returns (GBP) to 31 December 2025.

A gold investor who went all-in on New Year’s Eve 1979 (green line) would not be as happy as one who entered the market on New Year’s Eve 1969 (yellow line). Meanwhile Mr New Year’s Eve 1999 (purple line) would still be partying like Prince himself.

The upshot? Your entry point matters – as I believe The Purple One knew only too well.

The green line is the path taken by the performance-chaser who piled into gold near its 1980 peak. Notice how this sucker got hammered by gold’s mega drawdown for the first 20 years. Recovery only begins in late 1999. Eventually – more than 25 years after the comeback begins – Mr Green looks back on 2.4% annualised returns.

By contrast, the yellow line enjoys a decade of growth before giving up most (but not all) of its early gains to the 1980-99 abyss. A quarter of a century later, Colonel Mustard or whoever this is, has come through it all to post highly-respectable 4.8% annualised returns.

Finally, gold’s galactic collapse is but a historical curiosity to the purple-lined investor. For them, it’s onwards and upwards to a glittering 8.8% annualised return.

Of course, every asset’s returns are path dependent. But gold’s outcomes can be particularly divergent. Which helps explain why gold ownership is so divisive, and why some are fanatical about it and others indifferent.

In short, it’s why gold tastes of Marmite.

Crisis management

The next chart shows more clearly why gold is worth owning (I hope). See how the yellow line zigs when equities zag:

Gold and equities are both volatile as hell. They’re also extremely careless: losing decades all over the shop.

But for over half-a-century they’ve counterbalanced each other remarkably well.

In fact, nothing else has compensated as effectively as gold for equities’ worrying habit of going nowhere for years.

Meanwhile, equities typically buck up as gold spirals down.

Here’s the numbers for the lost decades for each asset shown in the chart above:

Lost decades	Equities return (%)	Gold return (%)	Peak loss (%)	Offset at peak loss (%)
Dec 1972 – Dec 1984	0	144.1	-56.1	191.5
Jan 1980 – Jul 2011	655.7	0	-78.3	665.2
Aug 2000 – May 2014	0	201	-50.7	8
Oct 2011 – March 2020	104.1	0	-40.2	53.6

​​Gold counters equities losses, equities counter gold. Inflation-adjusted cumulative total returns (GBP).

Gold returned 144% when equities went sideways for 12 years from 1972 to 1984. During that period, equities losses hit -56% in April 1980. But gold was up 191.5% at the same time.

The rest of the table repeats the same story. You can see how equities counterbalance gold’s peak losses, and vice versa. (Equity drawdowns are shaded in the table and gold’s aren’t. ‘Offset at peak loss’ is the gain of the countervailing asset when the ‘lost decade’ asset registers its worst loss.)

Driven to extraction

As that last table shows, gold refutes the old market adage: all correlations ‘go to one’ in a crisis.

Clearly gold brings its own bag of troubles along with it. But happily, equities help you bear those in turn.

Of course there are no guarantees. Gold wasn’t the best diversifier during the Dotcom Bust. It also dipped 30% initially during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) before finally answering the alarm call.

There’s almost bound to be a financial disaster eventually that features gold and equities sliding together.

So I’m not arguing for the 60/40 portfolio to be recast as 60/40 split between equities/gold. But I am saying that gold has a solid role to play in smoothing the returns of a well-diversified modern portfolio alongside more traditional bedfellows like bonds and cash.

And yet, I still have my reservations…

Yellow alert

If you view your portfolio assets in isolation – rather than as part of a balanced team – then gold can be hard to live with. Not now, when it’s going gangbusters, but whenever it next fails to shine.

That time will come, probably quite soon, because gold is sickeningly volatile as we saw in the chart above. It’s even more of a rollercoaster ride than equities.

For example, 39% of gold’s annual returns were negative from 1970 to 2025. As opposed to just 28% of years being down for equities.

Moreover gold spent 31 years underwater up until July 2011. It then rose to new highs for all of three months before diving back in the red – where it stayed for another nine years!

Essentially, gold was underwater for over 39 years between 1980 and 2020. (While paradoxically saving the day during the GFC. So again, it depends when you bought in.)

In sum, the barbarous relic is even more painful to own than World equities as a standalone asset. If you can’t handle having your patience sorely tested, then forget about owning the yellow metal.

However, if you are willing to hold an asset for its strategic value – as opposed to highly uncertain short-term profits – then consider allocating a chunk to gold.

So metal

I’ll close out with the latest in a series in which Warren Buffett says in a couple of sentences, 20 years ago, what I struggle to say in a thousand words today.

Here’s a wonderful gold quote from the old maestro that encapsulates the dilemma:

Gold is a way of going long on fear, and it has been a pretty good way of going long on fear from time to time. But you really have to hope people become more afraid in a year or two years than they are now. And if they become more afraid you make money, if they become less afraid you lose money, but the gold itself doesn’t produce anything.

I completely buy that. You can see from the last chart that gold spikes in eras of great turmoil, when confidence crumbles in the system itself: the Oil Crisis of 1973-74, the Second Oil Crisis of 1979, the GFC, and close cousin the European Sovereign Debt Crisis.

Which brings us up to the current era of instability, which some characterise as a polycrisis. (Sounds more like a depressed parrot to me.)

If you think we’re heading for an age of peace, prosperity, and political harmony, then gold should be redundant. But personally I’m happy to wager 10% of my portfolio on fear.

After all, it looks like fear gains the upper hand quite often:

Take it steady,

The Accumulator