Spot the Dogs: Poor Investment Funds

Every year Bestinvest name & shame the worst performing (dog) investment funds ; those underperforming the benchmark in each of the last three years and down on the benchmark by 10% over the same period.

Scottish Widows were quoted as ‘gone to the dogs’, with over half the group’s funds underperforming.

The worst culprits in different categories were

• UK – £13m Marlborough UK Equity Growth, down 37%
• European – £355m Melchior European Opportunities, down 37%
• International – £60m UBS Global Optimal, down 14%
• North America – £9m Invesco Perpetual US Aggressive, down 27%
• Tech – £37m Jupiter Global Technology, down 11%
• Japan – £66m M&G Japan Smaller Companies, down 28%
• Emerging Markets – £59m Lloyd George Emerging Markets, down 19%
• Asia Pacific – £232m Invesco Perpetual Hong Kong & China, down 25%

Invesco Perpetual have star manager Neil Woodford but as you can see are home to 2 dogs.

10 Largest Investment Funds in the UK

Interesting article in Fund Strategy about investment fund size & performance. Normal logic is that if a fund becomes bigger because of populariy it becomes harder to run, it is more difficult to find invest the money in good value values which are often small in size.

The one exception has been Neil Woodford at Invesco Perpetual with his Income & High Income funds, who gas managed ot maintain his performance despite huge inflows of cash.

Woodford has nealy £15 billion in money invested in his funds. Huge, but as Chris Traulsen of Morningstar pointed out, the largest US funds exceed $100 billion.

Would I invest in any of the top 10 funds? Yes, a few...however I would avoid others.