Can I have some feedback on my selection of funds please

grey_gym_sock

that past performance isn't a guide to future performance? ... i'm sure you've heard that, but more specifically: funds, and sectors, may do very well for a few years, and then circumstances change, and they may do very badly. if you pick what's at the top of the performance tables, it may be at the bottom next time. and that may not be because the manager has messed up; it may just be that circumstances not longer favour his approach, or no longer favour the sector.

you also need to distinguish which sectors have done well vs which funds have done well in each sector. (though perhaps you are doing - i'm not sure from what you've said.)

jonj123

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

that past performance isn't a guide to future performance? ... i'm sure you've heard that, but more specifically: funds, and sectors, may do very well for a few years, and then circumstances change, and they may do very badly. if you pick what's at the top of the performance tables, it may be at the bottom next time. and that may not be because the manager has messed up; it may just be that circumstances not longer favour his approach, or no longer favour the sector.

you also need to distinguish which sectors have done well vs which funds have done well in each sector. (though perhaps you are doing - i'm not sure from what you've said.)

I understand that past performance is not a guide but it may give an slight indication. I have also tried to choose funds from different sectors to minimize loss if one sector does badly. I assume that the top 150 funds on HL are a good indication of which funds are likely to do well as it has been selected by experts, no?

grey_gym_sock

i wouldn't take HL's top 150 funds too seriously. they are experts - in marketing.

their list excludes funds which don't pay commission (to them) - and some of these are worth considering because of their low charges. it's difficult to tell whether it's also influenced by the amount of commssion paid.

you're quite right about choosing a variety of sectors.

i think the problem with past performance is if you just look at the performance between 2 dates (e.g. n years ago and now). because you can get very different results if you use different dates. if you look at a range of different dates, or look at a graph, then you can get a feel for what the good and bad periods might look like.

Linton

jonj123 wrote: »

I understand that past performance is not a guide but it may give an slight indication. I have also tried to choose funds from different sectors to minimize loss if one sector does badly. I assume that the top 150 funds on HL are a good indication of which funds are likely to do well as it has been selected by experts, no?

No. The consensus here has been that the 150 list is a marketing ploy. You can research details of past performance of about 1500 funds for yourself on https://www.trustnet.com. The website allows you to sort by performance over various extended periods and for individual years.

My preference is to decide the sector allocation first and then chose what I see as good funds from the trustnet data rather than choose good funds first and then worry about sectors.