Platform for comparison of funds

Bostonerimus1

loveprada said:

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.

An FA is not the same as an investment manager. Also gamblers, not investors, indulge in market timing.

Bostonerimus1

the_k_dog said:

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.

An index tracker is also a "fund", but they differ from actively managed funds as they don't include the hubris and large fees. There will always be some active funds that beat the markets (and many that don't) and certainly there are individual stocks that have stratospheric gains, the difficulty is identifying them and buying and selling them at the right times. So if you're a regular person with a time horizon greater than 5 or 10 years and looking to build up a nest egg for retirement index funds offer a relatively stress free path, but they are not guaranteed or entirely "set and forget" like a DB pension and need some minimum amount of attention.

eskbanker

the_k_dog said:

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.

That first, bolded, bit is a massive generalisation!  Funds have a variety of objectives and characteristics, but anyone believing that outperforming 'the market' (which one(s)?) is inherent should spend more time researching.  And the low cost index trackers you refer to as an alternative are funds too of course, so if your point relates specifically to actively managed funds then you should make that clear....

loveprada

the_k_dog said:

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.

There is a book called The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. One of the first things the author says is you shouldn't try to beat the market! It's a good book but I've only read very little of it so far.