Welcome....there are some very knowledgeable people in the forum who will be able to advise you but you may need to wait a few days before they all read your post so don't go away and think nobody is going to answer, they will! Here's my ten pence on some of the issues you've raised, caveat...I'm a relative novice but I've been through the process you're going through currently and have had a couple of years hands on in the markets so I've out of diapers:

IFA's/advisors - they are mostly all unregulated in Thailand so you  will do well to avoid them all, especially western IFA's who come to Thailand touting for expat business. UK IFA's may try and tell you differently but UK licensed IFA's are only approved to deliver advice in the UK, not when they're over here on holiday etc.

Tax - if you are UK resident or your income arises in the UK then it will be subject to UK Revenue rules, holding your investments offshore overcomes that problem. Investments held in Thailand, unless they held under a tax exempt scheme, are taxable in Thailand. Income remitted to Thailand in the year it was earned is technically taxable in Thailand but in practise the Thai Revenue does not attempt to do so.

Vanguard - is a huge bond/equity fund where percentages of each can be varied according to risk appetite. Personally I think the fund is way to large to be nimble and that a mix of other geographically diverse equity and (perhaps) bond funds would be lower risk and provide better returns. 

Platform - some people swear by IB, I personally swear by Hargreaves Lansdowne, if you can swing an account there somehow it will save you lots of money. If nothing else, try reading the wealth of material on their web site about funds and investing, it'll save you a lot of grief.

What to invest in - I'm invested in 12 globally diverse funds, 27% in the US, 11% in the UK, 12% in Europe, 12% in Developed Asia and 14% in emerging markets. The remainder is split between three bond/income funds. It's good practice to identify the best fund managers that you can and then finds funds that they manage that will suit you best, doing things the other way around doesn't work for me...it's a bit like choosing a good doctor or a good hospital! You can check the track records and investment performance history of individual funds/managers on Morningstar.com or Trustnet.com. I like funds that invest in more than one geographical region, that means the fund manager has some room to escape/maneuver if something goes wrong in their primary area of investment. I also much prefer actively managed funds rather than ETF's, if you pick your fund/manager well they will more than pay for themselves. My best performing fund this year is Baillie Gifford International which has returned over 29%, it's invested 59% US, 14% EU, 11% EM, 9% Japan and 4% Aisa, I can highly recommend it, the fund managers have some of the best reputations of any in the industry and have long successful track records.

Lastly, there's also a wealth of material on this forum so I would urge you to read through it rather than reinvent the wheel.

Hey I so appreciate you bothering to put so much effort into a response. It’s massively helpful and I will definitely take most of your advice

Curious to know if the US “get you” as you have US stocks in the portfolios you own. What I mean by get you is simply if they tax you and withhold somehow a percentage of your returns - I keep reading 30% on top of the Thai tax you would pay?

Again thanks for the awesome help

BTW you said you were thinking of opening an account with IB who I believe are in Luxemburg. That means your investment funds would be held in Luxemburg and subject only to taxes there, there should not be any liability to UK tax because you are not UK resident and also no liability to Thai tax if the proceeds are kept outside Thailand.

Below is a link to the thread that was started when I began to learn about investing in this forum, you'll see all the silly questions I asked and all the mistakes I made so it may save you some time:

bigmango.boards.net/thread/10888/pension-portfolios

There's another thread I'll try to find about IFA's or financial advisors in Thailand, you just don't want to go there because it will cost you heavily....think shark tank!

Posters Fletchsmile, rgs and AyG (and others) have all been investing for many years and are highly knowledgable, at least two of them have worked in the industry previously so they have a wealth of knowledge, they will no doubt be along soon to add their ten cents.

It took me at least a year to become even a little bit comfortable with managing my own funds and with the choices I had made but there again I'm somewhat dyslexic and retarded, you no doubt will do so in much less time! A few basic rules may help and others:

- go for grade A Fund Managers only, find ones that have lots of successful experience and who are highly rated. You can check out the annual performance of funds and fund managers on Trustnet and Morningstar and pretty soon you'll become familiar with their names.

- spread your funds geographically, the US is the biggest investment market and many other markets follow what happens there. But that sort of contagion doesn't always occur and a good geographically spread portfolio may help take some of the stings out of markets falls, think 15% in each market to start with perhaps 25% in the US and adjust from there.

- once you've made your choice on paper, track performance for a while before you commit in order to make sure you understand what you've got. The last thing you want to do is to constantly tweak your portfolio every time you think something is wrong because every change will cost you money...trust me, I know this!! Be prepared for market falls and don't panic and pressing the sell button. It can be unnerving if not frightening to spend lots of time making your choices and then one week later 5% is wiped off the value of your portfolio...watch, wait and learn and do nothing.

- try not to end up with a large percentage of your overall investments in a small handful of sectors or stocks, it's easy to do that with Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Alphabet etc, every fund wants to hold them. Similarly, 30% of your portfolio in say tech stocks would not be a good idea either.

- lookout for duplication between funds, easier said than done but hey, nobody said this was going to be easy.

- Charges: There are charges for platform fees, in your case IB and then there are individual fund charges. I personally don't mind paying 1% in individual fund fees for an actively managed fund that's producing good results/returns, it's silly I think to buy a fund just because it's got the lowest charges. An exception to this rule might be the US market where most individual funds almost find it hard to beat the benchmark. An Index Trust tracker that tracks all the stocks in an index helps solve that problem and works well for me in covering the US indicies.

- Decide what you want to do on the equities versus/bond split in your portfolio. If you're young enough and have the risk appetite you may decide on 100% equities, if you're more traditional then a 70/30 or 80/20 equities/bond split may be more suitable - some think that bonds are a drag on equity fund performance, I think they have a place in a decent portfolio. I hold Mann and Royal London, both of which provide me with income to cover my platform fees and I have no plans to get rid of them. Mixed asset funds are worth understanding because that's what Vanguard is, a fund that holds a mix of bonds and equities within the same fund where the proportion of each varies based on risk appetite, 60/40, 70/30, 80/20 etc. Personally I prefer to pick my own components because whilst huge funds like Vanguard may get some parts of their selection right, some parts of it will be wrong, just like yours will be from time to time except you'll be able to change the parts that you get wrong and you'll be able to do it quickly.

- avoid hedge funds because of the risk.

- Decide on INC/ACC. short for income or accumulation. Individual funds usually offer both INC and ACC versions meaning that dividends are paid out to investors (INC) or reinvested in the fund (ACC), younger people may prefer ACC because it provides for slightly better growth and they probably don't need the income at a young age.

- Understand the difference between Investment Trusts (IT) and the other types of investment funds, they determine the way a fund is structured and its assets are owned and there are pluses and minuses to each. IT's tend to be slightly safer because they sell shares in funds where the funds' assets are owned by the shareholders, the other types of funds are more like memberships and in a worst-case scenario, the fund can lose all its assets and investors will receive nothing. But IT's are not without risk because buying into them or selling them involves paying a premium or discount to NAV (net asset value) going in and comming out and this can vary substantially over time...I personally hold only one IT but there are others who swaer that it's the safest way to go.

- if you like to read, the following link will tell you much about the mechanics or investing and the terminology but it's a long slog: www.investopedia.com/investing-essentials-4689754

Take your time with all of this, there's a lot to learn but some effort on the front end will pay big dividends later (pun intended), don't rush out and just buy stuff just for the sake of getting into the game, that I think would be a big mistake.

It will be useful if you can tell us your age, your residency, the currency you earn in and your longer term objectives, it will also help if you can tell us the scale of your investment, under 50k Pounds, 50 to 100K Pounds etc etc., those things will impact on fund specific advice such as where to invest in what and also help with understanding your foreign currency and tax risk.

Is it not possible to open an IB account based on confirmation of tax residency? If the OP is tax resident in Thailand that would at least be a start and getting a Thai tax ID is easy to do.

OP - I'm a Brit who has been resident in Thailand since 2005. Three years ago I returned to the UK, bought a flat, made myself UK resident for a whole host of purposes and then rented out my flat and returned to Thailand where I've been pretty much ever since! One of the things I did during the few months I was back was to open a Hargreaves Lansdown investment account which had been previously denied to me because I wasn't UK resident. I subsequently transferred my investments into that account and I now manage them happily over the internet from Thailand.

I'm not suggesting you return and buy property in order to open an investment account, I merely point out that once you have a mailing address in the UK the account set up/transfer process is very simple, even if you never use that address again for mail purposes.

I'm confused, you opened an IBKR account last year but you live in Thailand do you not? That being the case, did IBKR not want details such as your Thai tax ID number?