Anything better than BlackRock Consensus 100 available at the moment

JusinScot

I am trying to get my finances back on track.... I currently have funds in BlackRock Consensus 100 and its been doing well for the first 3 years but has since flattened. 



Is there any other product I should consider moving to?  

eskbanker

Recent performance isn't a sound basis on which to measure investments - over the past 18 months or so you'd have been better to have kept your money in cash deposit form, but that's unlikely to suit your investment objectives, which should be long term in nature.

If you're wanting exposure to equities then a pure global tracker may be a better bet than an equity-heavy multi-asset fund, but what was the thought process behind your original selection of Consensus 100?

https://monevator.com/best-global-tracker-funds/

InvesterJones

Also depends what 'better' means for you, there are certainly cheaper global funds.

Albermarle

There are thousands of alternative investments. Without knowing more info about you and you and your situation, it is difficult to suggest anything.

dunstonh

Multi-asset funds like Consensus 100 and VLS100 only exist for completeness.  However, BR and Vanguard obviously get enough people falling for it given the amount invested in them.      A global tracker would be cheaper.

MK62

Is using "multi-asset" to describe Blackrock Consensus 100 and Vanguard LifeStrategy 100 not a  bit of a stretch?.....😉.

JohnWinder

I think you can decide for yourself if BR’s C100 should be ditched for under-performance, with a few questions. It seems to be a largely equity fund of several regional index funds, so…
Is it largely equities you want to invest in?
What’s been the performance of those indexes during your period of concern? Your fund might be simply reflecting market returns, in which case you accept what that market provides or stay out of it. And are those several funds tracking their index reasonably closely? And for the fine print, are those indexes good for investing in?
BR’s C100’s managers have the discretion to include other assets like bonds, as well as change the balance of regional stocks; is that what you want, or would you rather one or several separate funds which stick to their knitting by removing the manager’s discretion? Their discretion will be partly responsible for their returns - good or bad.
To my eye your fund is expensive but probably not a horror in other respects. Jumping out of it because of disappointing performance is a classic investor behavioural mistake, and one of the reasons that retail investors on average get lower returns than the funds they invest in. Have a look at Morningstar’s ‘mind the gap’ research; we’re talking more than 1%/year. You’d cry if you were paying >1% of total assets /year in unnecessary fees.
Even before that research, those who knew the game had picked up on behavioural errors we’re all prone to make. A famous quote is ‘don’t just do something, stand there’, which could well have been suggested after your post 6 months ago ‘I think the market is going to crash. How do I protect my money?’ where you wrote:
‘I feel like I should be doing something…’ https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6389455/i-think-the-market-is-going-to-crash-how-do-i-protect-my-money/p5
And for the record, since you wrote ‘crash’ the biggest equity market is up 8% in six months and your fund up 4%.
The experts can’t beat the market with timing, you and I should learn from that.

bostonerimus

How long is a piece of string? People should stop believing that they can somehow find some optimal fund, asset allocation or path to financial objectives. There are innumerable ways to be successful. Just avoid silly mistakes like selling sensible long term investments after short term losses and ignore the hype of the financial press around "The Best Funds". Keep your expensed down and keep investing regularly for the rest of your life.

JusinScot

JohnWinder said:

I think you can decide for yourself if BR’s C100 should be ditched for under-performance, with a few questions. It seems to be a largely equity fund of several regional index funds, so…
Is it largely equities you want to invest in?
What’s been the performance of those indexes during your period of concern? Your fund might be simply reflecting market returns, in which case you accept what that market provides or stay out of it. And are those several funds tracking their index reasonably closely? And for the fine print, are those indexes good for investing in?
BR’s C100’s managers have the discretion to include other assets like bonds, as well as change the balance of regional stocks; is that what you want, or would you rather one or several separate funds which stick to their knitting by removing the manager’s discretion? Their discretion will be partly responsible for their returns - good or bad.
To my eye your fund is expensive but probably not a horror in other respects. Jumping out of it because of disappointing performance is a classic investor behavioural mistake, and one of the reasons that retail investors on average get lower returns than the funds they invest in. Have a look at Morningstar’s ‘mind the gap’ research; we’re talking more than 1%/year. You’d cry if you were paying >1% of total assets /year in unnecessary fees.
Even before that research, those who knew the game had picked up on behavioural errors we’re all prone to make. A famous quote is ‘don’t just do something, stand there’, which could well have been suggested after your post 6 months ago ‘I think the market is going to crash. How do I protect my money?’ where you wrote:
‘I feel like I should be doing something…’ https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6389455/i-think-the-market-is-going-to-crash-how-do-i-protect-my-money/p5
And for the record, since you wrote ‘crash’ the biggest equity market is up 8% in six months and your fund up 4%.
The experts can’t beat the market with timing, you and I should learn from that.

Yes thanks for the reply. I was convinced 6 months ago that the market was going to crash and nothing happened. I learned my lesson there. 

MK62

JohnWinder said:

And for the record, since you wrote ‘crash’ the biggest equity market is up 8% in six months and your fund up 4%.
The experts can’t beat the market with timing, you and I should learn from that.

......however for a UK investor, over the last 6 months since the OP wrote that post, Sterling's rise v USD has meant that the 8% rise in the biggest equity market, would have been more than wiped out (unless you were in a hedged fund)......you'd be looking at being about 5-6% down in GBP terms, so in that respect, being up 4% probably isn't a bad result all things considered (with the major caveat being that equity investments shouldn't really be judged over just 6 months)

PS.....global trackers, such as Fidelity Index World, are about flat over the same period.

My own opinion is that funds such as VLS100 and BRCS100 probably trim US equity allocations and boost UK allocations as much to curtail exposure to foreign currencies a little, esp USD, as any judgement of the pros and cons of investing in US companies or the relative size of the US equity market. That has worked against them for many years as Sterling fell overall v USD, but has had the opposite effect over the last 6 months as Sterling has risen.

Albermarle

MK62 said:

JohnWinder said:

And for the record, since you wrote ‘crash’ the biggest equity market is up 8% in six months and your fund up 4%.
The experts can’t beat the market with timing, you and I should learn from that.

......however for a UK investor, over the last 6 months since the OP wrote that post, Sterling's rise v USD has meant that the 8% rise in the biggest equity market, would have been more than wiped out (unless you were in a hedged fund)......you'd be looking at being about 5-6% down in GBP terms, so in that respect, being up 4% probably isn't a bad result all things considered (with the major caveat being that equity investments shouldn't really be judged over just 6 months)

PS.....global trackers, such as Fidelity Index World, are about flat over the same period.

My own opinion is that funds such as VLS100 and BRCS100 probably trim US equity allocations and boost UK allocations as much to curtail exposure to foreign currencies a little, esp USD, as any judgement of the pros and cons of investing in US companies or the relative size of the US equity market. That has worked against them for many years as Sterling fell overall v USD, but has had the opposite effect over the last 6 months as Sterling has risen.

It is a good point, and I guess the same issue will affect many traditional/workplace pension providers, where the default funds ( which often 95% of the clients are in ) tend to have quite a UK bias.
On the other hand they will have a % of bonds that will have had a negative effect.