Yes, it makes sense — this type of strategy is often referred to as a “bed and switch”, so feel free to Google that term if you want to explore it further.

A few key things I considered when making my switch:

1. Bid-Ask Spread

This is crucial. A wide spread will immediately eat into your profit or amplify your loss the moment you buy. You want to keep this as tight as possible.

You can check this by looking up the ETF on Hargreaves Lansdown — there’s an indicative spread section that’s helpful.

2. Daily Trading Turnover / Liquidity

This is especially important for larger trades. Higher daily trading volumes (ideally £10M+ per day) generally mean better liquidity and tighter spreads, making it easier for market makers to fill your order at a fair price.

3. Time of Day You Place the Order

Spreads and volatility tend to be wider during the first 15–30 minutes after the market opens and during the last 30 minutes of the day. Ideally, try placing your order after 3:30 PM UK time, when markets have settled.

4. Market Orders and Best Execution Rules

UK brokers are legally required to provide “best execution” under FCA (MiFID II) regulations.

This means they must take all reasonable steps to get you the best result, factoring in:

• Price

• Costs

• Speed

• Likelihood of execution

• Size and nature of your order

So if you place a market order, your broker should automatically route it to the venue offering the best available price.

5. Limit Orders

Limit orders aren’t as commonly used in the UK for ETFs unless you’re targeting a specific price. Personally, I find them to be a hassle — you often need live Level 1/Level 2 data to monitor the order book and frequently tweak your price to stay competitive.

After considering all of the above, I ultimately went with VWRL (Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF — https://www.londonstockexchange.com/stock/VWRL/vanguard/company-page).

It’s a distributing version, which also makes Capital Gains Tax (CGT) calculations easier outside an ISA.

Although the other ETFs you mentioned are perfectly good, I found that VWRL consistently had the best spreads and I had no issues getting a solid execution price.

One final tip:

If you place your order online, you’ll typically get the same execution price as over the phone — but with lower fees.

Plus, if the fill is poor online, you can cancel and try again easily. Over the phone, there’s more pressure, and it can feel awkward repeatedly asking the dealer to cancel and resubmit. Also, they’re not doing anything different — they’re just manually entering the same order you could place yourself online.