Flexible multi-asset funds run by Schroders, Unicorn and Newton have made some of the best risk and return numbers over recent years, research by FE Trustnet suggests. 
We have been running an ongoing series to find out which funds are most frequently in the top decile for cumulative five-year returns up to the end of 2015 as well as the annual returns of 2015, 2014 and 2013, annualised volatility, maximum drawdown, downside capture, alpha generation, Sharpe ratio and upside capture.
We add the funds’ decile rankings together to give a score, where a 10 shows a fund has been first decile in each metric and a 100 indicates 10th decile performance in each. Essentially, the lower the score the more first decile rankings a fund has achieved.
In the following article we look at the IA Flexible sector and have highlighted five of the best performers over the following pages. We’ve taken the FTSE WMA Stock Market Growth index as the benchmark as it covers a range of equities, bonds, alternative assets and complex strategies, even though none of the funds here use it as their own benchmark.
