Best Funds in 2007/Predictions for 2008

Liz_the_Whizz

Interesting article from thisismoney giving the lowdown on the winners and losers for 2007, plus predictions for what and what not to invest in for 2008:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/investing/article.html?in_article_id=428290&in_page_id=166

It's all so easy with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight;) .

pazzazz

commercial property funds it is then for this year
:beer:

dunstonh

Funny you should say that. Property is going to look like a good buy at some point in 2008.

I have seen articles similar to the one Liz has posted with different fund managers saying property could return to favour during the year.

If I was intending to do a regular contribution and looking where to invest to benefit from pound cost averaging then a property fund could well be worth inclusion.

wombat42_2

Also see here:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/investing/article.html?in_article_id=428706&in_page_id=166

It is amazing that Gartmore China Opps and JPM Natural Resources are still hot tips for 2008 even after huge rises over each of the last five years. I had all my dosh in those two funds for a while last year but got scared off by short periods of downward volatility. JPM Natural Resources dipped very badly for a short time when the first bout of credit crunch downturn happened (but recovered rapidly) but now it keeps rising against the market trend even when the wider markets goes down such as yesterday.

Question for DunstonH - surely the resources sector is a fairly safe bet with a lot of upside potential ? So why not put a sizable slab of dosh into a commodity fund such as JPM Natural Resources of Meryll Lynch Gold funds?

dunstonh

Question for DunstonH - surely the resources sector is a fairly safe bet with a lot of upside potential ? So why not put a sizable slab of dosh into a commodity fund such as JPM Natural Resources of Meryll Lynch Gold funds?

For your specialist sector allocation no problem. However, they are high risk funds so you dont want to be too top heavy (subject to your risk profile. In your case wombat thats higher than hgih and then a lot on top of that )

purch

So why not put a sizable slab of dosh into a commodity fund such as JPM Natural Resources of Meryll Lynch Gold funds?

No sector will be a 'one way bet' for 2008, and it won't just be equities that will be volatile.

Gold is likely to continue to rise in price, but it will react quite closely to the value of the USD. ( and IMHO I can see the FX markets seeing extreme valatility this year )

ML Gold and General is a good pick for 2008, but anyone investing in it will have to be comfortable with the likeliehood of the fund price being extremely volatile, and comfortable to experience periods of underperformance and falls in value.

dunstonh

Just got an email from citywire and one of the articles is that the worst of the commercial property correction has passed (not finished but nearly). Yields are now 6% and it estimates that property could rebound in 2008 to show an 8% gain due to the property funds dropping the unit prices more than the values and rebounding on the offer price basis.

You have to love this time of the year when they wheel out all these different people with conflicting opinions.