Platform for comparison of funds

dunstonh

I haven't switched anything. It did go up a bit to the extent that my loss was £23k but now I believe it is falling again.

It shouldnt be falling again.   A peak in September and falling in October was the pattern.  However, November is positive.

The funds are:
Jupiter Merlin Conservative Select I Acc 21%
Royal London Sustainable Managed Growth Trust C Acc 21%
Royal London Sustainable Diversified Trust C Acc 16%
Baillie Gifford Managed B Acc 15%
Liontrust Sustainable Future Defensive Managed 2 Net Inc 14%
MI Chelverton UK Equity Growth B Acc 13%

Generically, nothing wrong with any of those funds.   Not my cup of tea and it is a strange mix.   You would expect the gilt/bond heavier funds to be worse along with the tech heavy funds.    The mix is strange as you have one of the highest risk multi-asset funds in there (BG Managed) with a couple of cautious ones.   And then a single sector fund (UK equity) which you wouldn't normally use in a portfolio of multi-asset funds.     

Plus, you have three sustainable funds and the recent years have not been good for ESG/Sustainable.   But the question would be that if you are an ESG/Sustainable investor then why are only three of your funds sustainable and not the rest?    

Sustainable funds have a good year every now and then historically but spend most of the time under performing conventional.   So, they could be past performance recommendations rather than future performance recommendations.   i.e. they looked good after a good year and were selected for that reason.     This is the risk of looking at past performance.   Every dog has its day.

loveprada

Bostonerimus1 said:

I mostly invest in index tracker funds and those are pretty similar which ever one you buy. So it's very easy to develop a great portfolio without ever having to compare funds - presumably much to the annoyance of active fund managers and large parts of the financial press and industry.

Thanks. Do you use the automated or managed ones?

loveprada

dunstonh said:

I haven't switched anything. It did go up a bit to the extent that my loss was £23k but now I believe it is falling again.

It shouldnt be falling again.   A peak in September and falling in October was the pattern.  However, November is positive.

The funds are:
Jupiter Merlin Conservative Select I Acc 21%
Royal London Sustainable Managed Growth Trust C Acc 21%
Royal London Sustainable Diversified Trust C Acc 16%
Baillie Gifford Managed B Acc 15%
Liontrust Sustainable Future Defensive Managed 2 Net Inc 14%
MI Chelverton UK Equity Growth B Acc 13%

Generically, nothing wrong with any of those funds.   Not my cup of tea and it is a strange mix.   You would expect the gilt/bond heavier funds to be worse along with the tech heavy funds.    The mix is strange as you have one of the highest risk multi-asset funds in there (BG Managed) with a couple of cautious ones.   And then a single sector fund (UK equity) which you wouldn't normally use in a portfolio of multi-asset funds.     

Plus, you have three sustainable funds and the recent years have not been good for ESG/Sustainable.   But the question would be that if you are an ESG/Sustainable investor then why are only three of your funds sustainable and not the rest?    

Sustainable funds have a good year every now and then historically but spend most of the time under performing conventional.   So, they could be past performance recommendations rather than future performance recommendations.   i.e. they looked good after a good year and were selected for that reason.     This is the risk of looking at past performance.   Every dog has its day.

Thank you. Yes I believe it is a bizarre mix and definitely in the "every dog has its day" category. Purchased at their peak and then nosedived. I was not at all interested in ESG issues and stated this to the FA which he has noted in the report. I had no idea 3 of these are ESG. The mind boggles. I suppose he has a one size fits all routine. The irony is he was recommended to me by someone who has been with him over 20 years and raved about him saying he has made an average of 7% profit p.a. over the years after all costs/tax etc. I suppose he too fits into the every dog has its day category and is now well past it.
Question is where to go from here.
Yes it has picked up slightly from last month's losses.

Bostonerimus1

loveprada said:

Bostonerimus1 said:

I mostly invest in index tracker funds and those are pretty similar which ever one you buy. So it's very easy to develop a great portfolio without ever having to compare funds - presumably much to the annoyance of active fund managers and large parts of the financial press and industry.

Thanks. Do you use the automated or managed ones?

I mostly use a couple of index funds that track the Russell 3000 in the US and the FTSE Global all cap ex US equity indexes. I also have a small amount in a managed mulit-asset income oriented fund. I am retired and can keep most of my investments in equities because I have a DB pension and a rental property for income. My asset allocation won't be right for everyone, but if you use index funds you can remove, or at least minimize, the need for fund performance comparisons.

dunstonh

I had no idea 3 of these are ESG. 

Technically, sustainable is not ESG but its in the same theme park of restricting a range of conventional investment areas.

The mind boggles. I suppose he has a one size fits all routine.

My gut feeling, linked in with your timing, is that sustainable had a good year around the time you invested and it was fashionable.   There was a lot of media articles and companies putting out that ESG investing and sustainable investing was now the way as they were doing better than conventional.     I suspect he fell for that.   And then they fell back again.

The irony is he was recommended to me by someone who has been with him over 20 years and raved about him saying he has made an average of 7% profit p.a. over the years after all costs/tax etc. 

He probably has.   The key issue, more than any other, is timing.    The last 5 years have had 5 events of a scale that you would typically see once every decade.  Brexit, Coronavirus, a war in Europe, Energy crisis and inflation spike.     You started investing in the volatile part of the economic cycle.   Investing is long term.   Over 15 years you could well see growth like that but in short term discrete periods you will see nothing years or bloody awful years.      Then it can bounce back in the years head.

For example:



You will see a medium risk portfolio in 2000,2001 and 2002 was loss making.  Then look at the years that followed until the credit crunch came along, then the years that followed that.    So, that 20 year period could easily have given 7% or more at medium risk.

However, since you invested, your period has been more like the start of the graph and you are still waiting for those positive years to kick in to give you a better average.

loveprada

dunstonh said:

He probably has.   The key issue, more than any other, is timing.    The last 5 years have had 5 events of a scale that you would typically see once every decade.  Brexit, Coronavirus, a war in Europe, Energy crisis and inflation spike.     You started investing in the volatile part of the economic cycle.   Investing is long term.   Over 15 years you could well see growth like that but in short term discrete periods you will see nothing years or bloody awful years.      Then it can bounce back in the years head.

For example:



You will see a medium risk portfolio in 2000,2001 and 2002 was loss making.  Then look at the years that followed until the credit crunch came along, then the years that followed that.    So, that 20 year period could easily have given 7% or more at medium risk.

However, since you invested, your period has been more like the start of the graph and you are still waiting for those positive years to kick in to give you a better average.

Yes, exactly right. Hard to know whether to sit tight with these funds or move on. I wouldn't have minded so much if I had had these investments for say 5 years and had seen some good returns - at least that way I could have averaged it out, but currently it is just a heavy loss. It feels like I have been set back to the credit crunch years.
Did anyone see this fall coming prior to 2021?
Interesting to see this in graph form as the negative years don't seem to have dragged on too long but in my case it has already been 2 years.

Bostonerimus1

loveprada said:

dunstonh said:

I haven't switched anything. It did go up a bit to the extent that my loss was £23k but now I believe it is falling again.

It shouldnt be falling again.   A peak in September and falling in October was the pattern.  However, November is positive.

The funds are:
Jupiter Merlin Conservative Select I Acc 21%
Royal London Sustainable Managed Growth Trust C Acc 21%
Royal London Sustainable Diversified Trust C Acc 16%
Baillie Gifford Managed B Acc 15%
Liontrust Sustainable Future Defensive Managed 2 Net Inc 14%
MI Chelverton UK Equity Growth B Acc 13%

Generically, nothing wrong with any of those funds.   Not my cup of tea and it is a strange mix.   You would expect the gilt/bond heavier funds to be worse along with the tech heavy funds.    The mix is strange as you have one of the highest risk multi-asset funds in there (BG Managed) with a couple of cautious ones.   And then a single sector fund (UK equity) which you wouldn't normally use in a portfolio of multi-asset funds.     

Plus, you have three sustainable funds and the recent years have not been good for ESG/Sustainable.   But the question would be that if you are an ESG/Sustainable investor then why are only three of your funds sustainable and not the rest?    

Sustainable funds have a good year every now and then historically but spend most of the time under performing conventional.   So, they could be past performance recommendations rather than future performance recommendations.   i.e. they looked good after a good year and were selected for that reason.     This is the risk of looking at past performance.   Every dog has its day.

Thank you. Yes I believe it is a bizarre mix and definitely in the "every dog has its day" category. Purchased at their peak and then nosedived. I was not at all interested in ESG issues and stated this to the FA which he has noted in the report. I had no idea 3 of these are ESG. The mind boggles. I suppose he has a one size fits all routine. The irony is he was recommended to me by someone who has been with him over 20 years and raved about him saying he has made an average of 7% profit p.a. over the years after all costs/tax etc. I suppose he too fits into the every dog has its day category and is now well past it.
Question is where to go from here.
Yes it has picked up slightly from last month's losses.

7% average annual return over the past 20 years is ok, but I wouldn't rave about it as the FA isn't achieving anything better that an average DIY investor should achieve with a simple portfolio with minimal management.

loveprada

Bostonerimus1 said:

loveprada said:

dunstonh said:

I haven't switched anything. It did go up a bit to the extent that my loss was £23k but now I believe it is falling again.

It shouldnt be falling again.   A peak in September and falling in October was the pattern.  However, November is positive.

The funds are:
Jupiter Merlin Conservative Select I Acc 21%
Royal London Sustainable Managed Growth Trust C Acc 21%
Royal London Sustainable Diversified Trust C Acc 16%
Baillie Gifford Managed B Acc 15%
Liontrust Sustainable Future Defensive Managed 2 Net Inc 14%
MI Chelverton UK Equity Growth B Acc 13%

Generically, nothing wrong with any of those funds.   Not my cup of tea and it is a strange mix.   You would expect the gilt/bond heavier funds to be worse along with the tech heavy funds.    The mix is strange as you have one of the highest risk multi-asset funds in there (BG Managed) with a couple of cautious ones.   And then a single sector fund (UK equity) which you wouldn't normally use in a portfolio of multi-asset funds.     

Plus, you have three sustainable funds and the recent years have not been good for ESG/Sustainable.   But the question would be that if you are an ESG/Sustainable investor then why are only three of your funds sustainable and not the rest?    

Sustainable funds have a good year every now and then historically but spend most of the time under performing conventional.   So, they could be past performance recommendations rather than future performance recommendations.   i.e. they looked good after a good year and were selected for that reason.     This is the risk of looking at past performance.   Every dog has its day.

Thank you. Yes I believe it is a bizarre mix and definitely in the "every dog has its day" category. Purchased at their peak and then nosedived. I was not at all interested in ESG issues and stated this to the FA which he has noted in the report. I had no idea 3 of these are ESG. The mind boggles. I suppose he has a one size fits all routine. The irony is he was recommended to me by someone who has been with him over 20 years and raved about him saying he has made an average of 7% profit p.a. over the years after all costs/tax etc. I suppose he too fits into the every dog has its day category and is now well past it.
Question is where to go from here.
Yes it has picked up slightly from last month's losses.

7% average annual return over the past 20 years is ok, but I wouldn't rave about it as the FA isn't achieving anything better that an average DIY investor should achieve with a simple portfolio with minimal management.

One would have thought the investments he picked for me would have been solid and safe on that basis but no! He didn't pay much attention to timing either.

eskbanker

loveprada said:

Bostonerimus1 said:

7% average annual return over the past 20 years is ok, but I wouldn't rave about it as the FA isn't achieving anything better that an average DIY investor should achieve with a simple portfolio with minimal management.

One would have thought the investments he picked for me would have been solid and safe on that basis but no! He didn't pay much attention to timing either.

A 7% average over a 20 year period doesn't signify that there should be any expectation of the same over shorter periods, so comparing your short term experiences with that isn't appropriate!  To what extent did you agree that "solid and safe" was a meaningful measure of your requirements, or would you have been aiming for better returns (like 7%) instead?

What do you mean by the last comment about timing?  The traditional investing adage is 'time in the market, not timing the market', i.e. trying to predict movements is a fool's game, so were you (retrospectively) hoping that he'd be able to choose a 'good' time to invest?

the_k_dog

I've had it with funds. The whole point is to out perform the market, yet as I understand it, in the medium to longer term only about 1 in 20 does. Some 'carefully selected' ones in my 'portfolio' managed by city superstars have been nothing short of disastrous, and the fees are a rip off - the fund managers can't lose.

A realistic and increasingly popular consideration is to go pretty much all in on a low cost index tracker (such as HSBC FTSE all world index at just 0.13%). 

Perhaps keep some cash in a high interest account for reassurance and to settle your nerves for when a sharp equity downturn does come.