This week sees the release of the latest edition of Bestinvest’s “Spot The Dog” guide to the best and worst-performing funds available to retail investors.
One of the most striking features of the report is the huge divergence in performance between the best and worst funds as a result of the impact of the Covid crisis on different investment strategies.
Over the three-year period covered by the report, while the average fund in the Investment Association’s Global sector returned 32.4%, the best fund posted a gain of 162.6% while the worst posted a 9.6% loss.
TOP DOGS
Once again, the firm with the largest number of ‘woofers’ is Invesco with 11 funds totaling £9.2 billion in assets. As the report highlights, this is lower than six months ago but four of these funds are still ‘Tibetan Mastiff-sized beasts’.
Second place goes to fund firm Jupiter (JUP), which previously only ranked ninth in the table. The acquisition of Merian has increased the group’s tally of ‘dog’ funds to eight with a total of £4.1 billion of assets. ‘The biggest beast in this enlarged pack is the American pitbull-sized Merian North American Equity Fund’, notes the report.
In the UK All Companies sector, just seven out of 263 funds were classed as ‘dogs’, although five were repeat offenders from the last report including the former flagship Invesco UK High Income fund, Jupiter UK Growth and Legal & General UK Special Situations.
PEDIGREE CHUMS
As well as naming and shaming the worst performers, the report gives praise where it is due by listing the best performers in various sectors.
In the UK All Companies sector, top spot goes to the Liontrust UK Ethical fund with a three-year return of 31% or an outperformance of 37% against the MSCI UK All-Cap Index.
Snapping at its heels are the LF Lindsell Train UK Equity fund with a return of 24%, and the TB Evenlode Income fund with a return of 21% over three years.
