Regular readers will have noticed the gradual revealing of Asset Allocator’s annual 100 Club members over the past few weeks.
As a quick reminder, this is our annual hand-picked selection of premier funds and asset managers, in which 100 funds are selected based on stringent performance criteria.
These are then analysed by a panel of experienced fund selectors, who then decide which of these mandates represent the elite in each category.
The results are all in now, so we thought we’d summarise the highlights across equities for you.
The take-home message for our allocators is that there’s a range of high-performing equity funds across regions that aren’t necessarily widely held by the DFMs we cover.
This gives us the opportunity to shed some light on some lesser-frequented mandates that have held up nicely over the past one and five years.
Here’s the lowdown.
JP Morgan scrubs up nicely
The teams at JP Morgan have fared pretty well in our rankings this year, coming out victorious in three categories and shortlisted in a further four.
JPM UK Equity Plus, JPM American, and JPM Global Growth & Income all won in their respective sectors, though a peculiarity of our study shows that none of these funds are widely-held among DFMs in our database, despite their stellar showing.
Both the American and Global mandates are held by zero allocators, while the UK fund is held by just two – Close Brothers and AJ Bell.
The lack of wealth manager interest is perhaps most surprising in the case of JPM American, given how hard it is for active managers to outperform the S&P 500.
But managers Jonathan Simon and Timothy Parton have returned 127 per cent to investors over five years, compared to the index’s 80 per cent. No other fund comes close.
Man GLG justifies its popularity
One of the most popular funds in the income portfolios we monitor is Henry Dixon’s Man GLG Income, held by nine allocators.
Their backing has certainly been rewarded of late – Dixon came top in our 100 Club’s UK equity income category, ahead of its contemporaries at Artemis, JP Morgan, Gresham House and Redwheel.
He’s known for a deep value style that seems to have resonated with our judges, despite not delivering the highest total return for clients across either period.
Japanese high-performers stay small
Another tidbit we noticed was that the majority of the Japanese equity funds in our database tend to err on the smaller side of the funds universe.
While the winner of this category – Mark Pearson’s Arcus Japan – is a hefty £1.4bn in size, the remaining four funds have an average size of £172m.
Once again, these shortlisted funds aren’t filling up the Japanese portion of DFMs’ equity allocations, despite the impressive returns that they’re offering at present.
What we concluded across most regions, then, was the lack of correlation between shortlisted funds and our allocators’ holdings – so should they fancy shaking up their portfolios, then they’d be well-placed to trawl through Asset Allocator's nominees.
