Multi Manager Funds

le_loup

Looking for some help on finding the best comparison sites for MM funds.
I am more than capable (I think) of selecting my own funds but for portfolios I manage for my wife and my ma-in-law who have no knowledge or interest in such things, I worry about what they will do if/when I pop off. I have no intention of doing that but I have managed to go well over my family life span allocation.
The current portfolios are in equity income with a leavening of bond funds and over the last few months I have moved some of the money into H-L Income and Growth fund which has a reasonable performance. But should I wish to leave H-L, which I'm sure we are all considering, I want to know the alternatives.
Trustnet is my main source of information but the number of MM funds are so great and the focuses are so wide, it is very difficult to determine which one I could use and leave.
Any thoughts?

Totton

The multi-manager funds generally reside in the IMA sectors for flexible investment and/or one of the IMA Mixed Investment groups. You will need to decide if you want the manager to decide equity/bond ratio (IMA Flexible Investment) or go for one of the groupings such as IMA Mixed Investment 40-85& Shares.

Then use Trustnet to select your favourites, then you could put your top 5 into the Morningstar Fund Compare tool at http://tools.morningstar.co.uk/uk/fundcompare/default.aspx

When I have used Multi-Manager funds it has always been through the Jupiter Merlin offerings, they are usually a good choice imho. More info here http://www.jupiteronline.com/en-GB/Individual-investors/Funds-and-prices

HTH,
Mickey

Sobryma

Trustnet offers you the ability to setup and track funds via its Portfolio section. I ended up with Cazanove MM Diversity funds for my work SIPP.

Other good performers I setup include Bestinvest / Cirilium / F&C MM / Heartwood / Margetts / Premier.

le_loup

Mmm. Trustnet have a category called Unfettered Fund of Funds ... trouble it has 473 constituents all of which may have different objectives!
I guess I'm going to have to trawl through based upon, perhaps yield and performance. What I need is to be able to separate equity income, which is my preference. However, if there is no shortcut and no site that makes it easier, then it's cold towel time.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I will follow them up.

le_loup

It seems that:
F&C Navigator
Jupiter Merlin
Cazenove MM Diversity
and
Premier Multi Asset
lead the field in these sorts of funds all of whom I would trust as much as H-L although I am attracted slightly more by Premier as being younger, leaner and not being London based. I do have more "boutiques" in my present set up than larger houses.

Rollinghome

le_loup wrote: »

Looking for some help on finding the best comparison sites for MM funds.
I am more than capable (I think) of selecting my own funds but for portfolios I manage for my wife and my ma-in-law who have no knowledge or interest in such things, I worry about what they will do if/when I pop off.

It's something that I think about too and while I'd like to think I'd have time to simplify my affairs should I feel peaky, that plan might not work if I get hit by a bus.

There are probably any number of ways of going about it, including lining up an adviser (cough) ready to step in.

With fund of funds, apart from being very expensive, would your wife feel comfortable about monitoring performance and moving elsewhere if it dropped away? The most obvious way to reduce the need for monitoring is to use trackers.

It's often particularly difficult to evaluate fund of funds without being able to accurately calculate the level of risk which may change over time anyway. The easiest of the Jupiter Merlin funds to evaluate is arguable the Worldwide Portfolio which is almost entirely invested in equities/commodities. If you chart it, you'll see it's performed fairly badly against all-world trackers as well as under-performing the IMA Global sector.

Another approach might be to use a basket of suitable global ITs. That might have similar problems to the fund of fund approach but at least they should have a better performance. There are also multi-manager ITs.

Meanwhile, I'm going to keep taking the tablets.

le_loup

It's that bl00dy bus we have to watch out for. If they ever go electric I'm done for. Then again, there were trolley busses when I were a lad and they never got me then!
Fund of funds are expensive but nothing like the cost of an advisor! Trackers might be the solution, trouble is I'm conflicted because, so far, I have done so much better than trackers and I have this naive hope that a FofF manager may do as well as I do. (Pinch of salt there)
Thanks for your thoughts.

Sobryma

le_loup wrote: »

Mmm. Trustnet have a category called Unfettered Fund of Funds ... trouble it has 473 constituents all of which may have different objectives!
I guess I'm going to have to trawl through based upon, perhaps yield and performance. What I need is to be able to separate equity income, which is my preference. However, if there is no shortcut and no site that makes it easier, then it's cold towel time.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I will follow them up.

FWIW

What I did was filter on Trustnet Mixed Asset and then sort on FE Risk score so you can focus on similar risk levels (I wanted ~50) - then compared 5 years performance, max gain, max loss. Narrowed down to a few and chose Cazanove as it had best performance and lowest correlation to my benchmark fund (ISFL Bestinvest Income & Growth).

Obviously based on history but across a broad spread on conditions.

le_loup

Just tried that and it's a brilliant starting point; thanks. Trustnet have a very useful website.
Are you still happy to put your trust in Cazanove since their change of ownership? I used to hold their UK Income fund until the middle of last year and was very impressed by its performance.
My latest - but certainly not my last - thought on this subject is to do as Rollinghome suggested, and use a basket of trackers - but that so goes against the grain! But that's just me being stupid; I either let a manager decide on other managers but without me being able to sack that manager and die fretfully or just let the market decide and die peacefully.
Does anyone know if there is a website that allows the dead to make changes to a portfolio?

Totton

If looking at trackers then you might find this weeks Investors Chronicle useful. On page 24 there starts a decent article titled 'A winning portfolio in 10 moves', the portfolio suggests a 10 tracker portfolio but also gives a 7 holding option. The article covers 4 pages and may prove a useful read, unfortunately the online version is for subscribers only.

http://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/2014/01/23/tips-and-ideas/market-tactics/a-winning-portfolio-in-moves-ADrZEi3xe6ZYkfg3nmn9oJ/article.html

Another useful read for trackers is the oft suggested 'Smarter Investing' by Tim Hale, beware though that the book is a little heavy in places - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00ABHBAK6/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=103612307&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0273708007&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=1DB142346X70ZP0SXP5R

HTH,
Mickey

Sobryma

le_loup wrote: »

Just tried that and it's a brilliant starting point; thanks. Trustnet have a very useful website.
Are you still happy to put your trust in Cazanove since their change of ownership? I used to hold their UK Income fund until the middle of last year and was very impressed by its performance.
My latest - but certainly not my last - thought on this subject is to do as Rollinghome suggested, and use a basket of trackers - but that so goes against the grain! But that's just me being stupid; I either let a manager decide on other managers but without me being able to sack that manager and die fretfully or just let the market decide and die peacefully.
Does anyone know if there is a website that allows the dead to make changes to a portfolio?

No problem - what is good on the portfolio section is you can access a series of variables such as volatility etc.

I think the Cazanove MM team are very good with a long track record. Schroders have kept the team together I suspect to target Jupiter Merlin.
I am unsure what Schroders will do with their own MM team and funds - performance is not as good, cost is lower though but interestingly a lot of the Cazanove fund choices are appearing in the Schroder MM funds,