Octopus Titan VCT Offering

Just wondered if anyone is looking at this. Here is the prospectus: https://media-prod.ii.co.uk/s3fs-public/pdfs/octopus-titan-vct-prospectus-2019.pdf?FUJjf5qjgteQdIGmO5Eql9CFuScgIeZ_

Looked at this sometime ago. Fees seemed high and I wasn’t that convinced by past performance.

I never heard about VCT. I had to look it up: it is “Venture Capital Trust”.

Why are you looking at this, Hristiyan? I would like to learn more.

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Yeah it’s venture capital trust. Octopus invests in very early stage companies, which allows for a very good past performance, but also high risk. Fees are thus quite high, which kept me from investing. I used to work there though haha

Buying a VCT through a platform (rather than direct) is a bit of a faff and not something I suspect Freetrade want to really deal with right now.

To claim the income tax relief your platform and the VCT provider need to team up to ensure you personally get a VCT tax certificate - rather than the nominee account where it is actually held and registered. Without it you’ll be unable to get income relief - which is a major incentive of making the investment in the first place.

The sale process is also never quite that easy. You can secondary market sell them but the market is naturally illiquid, usually not entirely straight through your RSP/market maker electronically and subject to delays and wide spreads. You can sell them back to the VCT provider closer to NAV but again, not something I imagine FT want to be operating at this early stage.

Nerd time over. I’ve put myself to sleep. zzzzzzz

Financial Times discuss VCTs, including Octopus Titan VCT in this article

3.5% expense ratio + 20% performance fee? That’s even more expensive than your normal hedge fund!