The challenging market conditions of 2019 have seen professional investors turn to highly regarded active funds such as Fundsmith Equity, Lindsell Train Global Equity and Liontrust Special Situations, research by FE Trustnet shows, although Vanguard’s multi-asset funds seem to have been the biggest winners. 
Investors have had to cope with numerous headwinds this year, including Brexit and its associated political uncertainty in the UK, the US-China trade war, slowing economic growth and growing geopolitical tension in the Middle East.
Against this backdrop, we examined the research trends of the financial advisers, wealth managers and other fund pickers that use FE Analytics to see what has been catching their eye this year. We compared the popularity of Investment Association funds in the first nine months of 2019 with the previous three years to identify the winners and losers.
The below chart breaks down the change in research share over the two periods by fund sector, revealing that there has been a significant shift towards global equity funds.
Change in FE Analytics research share by sector during 2019
Source: FE Analytics Market Intel Tool
The first nine months of 2019, the IA Global sector accounted for 9.2 per cent of all research into the Investment Association universe carried out on FE Analytics. This compares with an average research share of 7.51 per cent between the start of 2016 and the end of 2018.
This is in keeping with a move towards global equity strategy for UK investors. Data from the Investment Association shows the IA Global sector has won fresh cash in every month of 2019, peaking in April with a £923m monthly net inflow.
As the chart shows, this has largely come at the expense of the UK equity sectors, which have Brexit uncertainty and negative sentiment hanging over them. Both the IA UK All Companies and IA UK Equity Income peer groups have been hit with monthly inflows for most of the year.
The IA Unclassified sector is the one that saw that largest fall in research share this year, but this is largely down to the fact that a number of its members have left for peer groups such as IA Volatility Managed.
Turning to individual funds and the offering with the biggest jump in its research share is Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Equity. Over the three years to the end of 2018, it captured 0.1893 per cent of the Investment Association; in 2019 this has climbed to 0.3301 per cent.
Those shares are small because of the sheer number of funds in the Investment Association universe (there’s more than 4,000 so the most heavily researched fund only gets a research share of 0.5003 per cent). A look at Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Equity’s jump up the research ranking might be more instructive: it was ranked 25th in popularity for the past three years but is now in second place.
Source: FE Analytics Market Intel Tool
The fund – which is built from underlying Vanguard index trackers – launched in June 2011 into the IA Mixed Investment 40-85% Shares sector and since then has made a 93.99 per cent total return since then, ranking it 13th out of its 99 peers.
The Vanguard LifeStrategy range’s low ongoing charges, diversified portfolio, automatic rebalancing and strong performance have seen them become very popular with financial advisers.
Indeed, all five of these products are in the top-25 funds with the biggest increase in research share over 2019 so far.
Lindsell Train Global Equity comes in second place, reflecting the move towards global strategies. It is currently the 18th most-researched Investment Association member on FE Analytics, climbing up from 140th in the previous three years.
The £8.7bn fund is headed up by FE Alpha Manager Michael Lindsell and Nick Train (with James Bullock as co-manager) and is currently in the IA Global sector’s top decile over one, three and five years. Since inception in March 2011, it has made a 317.72 per cent total return, compared with 114.95 per cent from its average peer and 160.78 per cent from its MSCI World benchmark.
Analysts at FE Invest said: “We have been very impressed by the team’s track record, and its performance is typically driven by stockpicking rather than its overweight and underweights to sectors versus the benchmark. The fund is very benchmark-agnostic and as such it can behave quite differently to the rest of the market.”
Another heavyweight in the global sector appears on the list: FE Alpha Manager Terry Smith’s £18.3bn Fundsmith Equity fund. It also has one of the best track records in its space and a strong following among advisers; it has been the most researched fund on FE Analytics for some time.
Despite the general move away from UK equities, some of the stronger names in the IA UK All Companies sector have been receiving more attention from professional investors this year.
CFP SDL UK Buffettology has gone from being the 266th most viewed fund on FE Analytics to the 47th after an impressive run of performance in recent years. The fund has been gathering assets on the back of this and has grown to £1.2bn in size.
Liontrust Special Situations, LF Lindsell Train UK Equity and TB Evenlode Income are other UK funds that advisers were already fans of but have spent even more time researching in 2019.