As one of our studies earlier this week revealed, some funds have gone a step further, making investors money since equities took a turn for the worst in early September. Among the best performing portfolio over the period is the increasingly popular Fundsmith Equity fund, up 9.6 per cent since 4 September.
Performance of fund, sector and index since 4 Sept
Source: FE Analytics
The fall in markets has called a number of formerly defensive managers into action, including Unicorn Mastertrust's Peter Walls. The manager told FE Trustnet earlier this week that he had halved his cash exposure to 10 per cent, and was in the process of buying Philip Matthews' Schroder UK Growth IT, formerly run by Julie Dean. Walls says he expects to put further cash to work in discounted investment trusts in the coming weeks.
Elsewhere, senior reporter Alex Paget highlighted a way of getting significant exposure to start-up companies spun out from university research groups – one of star manager Neil Woodford's highest-conviction areas.
Douglas Brodie's Baillie Gifford Global Discovery fund is much more nimble than CF Woodford Equity Income, enabling him to make much punchier bets in small companies than his rival. Brodie holds four of Woodford's university spin-outs, making up 8.3 per cent of his portfolio compared to CF Woodford Equity Income's 1.82 per cent.
Thanks to popular demand, we also conducted a thorough comparison of two of the most popular income products with both investors and advisers: Invesco Perpetual Distribution and Invesco Perpetual Monthly Income Plus.
Finally, FE Trustnet has reason to celebrate two new developments. Firstly, it was runner up in the Santander Financial Media Awards for Financial Trade Website of the year. Here’s hoping next year we go one step further.
More importantly, we’re pleased to announce that our income transparency campaign has directly resulted in Francis Brooke’s Trojan Income fund publishing its dividend history on its factsheet for the very first time.
Above is a screenshot of how the group now publishes its income record. In the next leg of our campaign, news editor Gary Jackson highlighted the best multi-asset funds for income in recent years, with a familiar name coming up trumps.