While unit trusts are the most prevalent and popular form of investing they have their drawbacks. Unlike exchange traded funds they are only priced and traded once a day. That means all trades or fund switches placed by UK investors are collated and transacted at the same time by fund platforms and fund houses.
In addition, because they are forward priced you don’t actually know the price you are buy/selling/switching at when you place the trade. Furthermore because a fund switch does in fact involve a sell instruction and then a buy instruction it can cause a delay leaving you out of the market for a short period of time. This is something that I covered in detail when answering an 80-20 Investor question in Chatterbox. For ease I replicate my response here:
“When switching unit trust funds there can be a time lag between the point at which you sell one fund and the time at which you invest in the new one.
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