Scottish Widows Series 2 Fund Options

fkerr

I have a workplace DC with Scottish Widows and I am currently invested 100% in to SW Baillie Gifford North American Equity. I would like to change the fund to have a lower risk profile with a selection of different funds. I would still like to be weighted towards North America but have other sectors as well. Can anyone advise on funds to select which have a track record of growth over the last five years.

Thanks

dunstonh

 I am currently invested 100% in to SW Baillie Gifford North American Equity.

Ouch.  Not a good choice.  Even when it was going up it was still not a good thing to do.  You should never invest 100% into any one country/region.  On the plus side, as long as you have held the bulk of it for over 2 years, you are back in the position you would have been had you received sector average returns.

It has been a good satellite fund where you rebalanced your portfolio but it is not a core fund and certainly not a 100% holding.

 I would like to change the fund to have a lower risk profile with a selection of different funds.

BG funds are typically amongst the highest risk funds in their sectors.   So, when you say you want a lower risk profile, you need to give more context on that as you were pretty much invested off the risk scale with your current fund.

 I would still like to be weighted towards North America but have other sectors as well. Can anyone advise on funds to select which have a track record of growth over the last five years.

Why would you want to look at performance over the last 5 years when the stockmarket is entering (has entered) a new cycle?

The US and global equities take it in turns to be best.  There is no reason why that should continue but if you look back over the decades, they switch around.   Possible reasons could be that the US has more growth companies and rest of the world (with some exceptions) has more value companies.  So, in periods of growth, US does better and in periods of value, the rest do better.

If you do not know what funds to select and the weightings to use then you shouldn't be picking single sector funds.  You made that mistake previously.   So, no point doing that again.    You should stick with funds from their multi-asset range.

Albermarle

You should be able to see the 5 year growth statistics of each fund on the SW website.

On the other hand 'Past Performance is not a guarantee of future returns ' 

For example I presume the BG fund has done very well for the past few years, but has dropped a lot this year?

michaels

Also check your platform fees, mine with SW were 'hefty' (15 for their pension portfolio 2 basic inhouse fund) so I have saved a lot by porting out the majority of m funds to a much cheaper platform.

I have no insight or expertise that means I can outperform the market by picking funds through anything but blind luck so have put everything in a global tracker with minimum fees.