On April 4, 2025, LSEG Lipper unveiled the results of the LSEG Lipper Fund Awards for Germany. It’s been a turbulent period for investors across all asset types. Such conditions highlight the importance of the LSEG Lipper Fund Awards for investors, whether institutional, wholesale, or retail, since they showcase the ability of a fund to deliver high risk-adjusted returns in changing market environments. This means that the winning funds were able to adopt their portfolios to the continuously changing and challenging market environments during their respective award periods.   Different methodologies lead to different results The LSEG Lipper Fund Awards

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best-performing funds in the IA Sterling Strategic Bond sector.   Sterling Strategic Bond allows investors, should they wish, to outsource the bond portion of their portfolios to one manager. If you don’t fancy the prospect of deciding whether to be long or short duration (a bond portfolio’s sensitivity to interest rate changes), where to be positioned between government, corporate investment grade or high yield debt, local currency or hard currency in emerging markets, or whether to be in emerging markets at all—well, this could be the solution. It is certainly a

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best performing funds in the IA UK All Companies sector.   The top seven funds in the Investment Association UK All Companies sector over three years are all value by approach. Value investing was out of fashion for most of the time following the global financial crisis and has recently been eclipsed by the market’s fascination with the “Magnificent Seven” US mega caps. Value investing boils down to buying stocks priced below the investor’s assessment of their fair value, then held until (or, safer to say, “if”) the market recognises that

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best-performing funds in the IA Infrastructure sector.   We last visited the Investment Association Infrastructure sector exactly a year ago. I fully admit it’s too niche for most retail investors, but before you tut over your morning kipper and turn the page, please read on, as major performance drivers for this sector—specifically, inflation and base rates—have wider (and hopefully instructive) lessons for investors. As a further incentive, if you are invested in a managed portfolio service or multi-asset fund, you may have exposure to such assets without realising it. Infrastructure sector

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best-performing funds in the IA Mixed Investment 40-85% Shares sector.   If you are not confident of building your own fund portfolio—or, indeed, if you want a blended ‘core’ of asset classes to build onto with more tactical views—then you may well have cause to look at Mixed Investment funds. They come in three risk bands, with risk seen as increasing as the equity component increases. Those who saw the value of their bond holdings decimated as inflation spiked may wish to query this view of risk, but that’s how the

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best performing funds in the IA Europe ex UK sector.   Investors are looking at Europe once more. Over three and five years, flows have been strongly negative. That has reversed over the 12 months to June, with inflows of £3.89bn. It’s certainly not anything to do with enthusiasm over the region’s economic prospects. The Eurozone returned to growth in the first quarter of the year, exiting a technical recession (two successive quarters of contracting GDP). Although the European Central Bank was (along with Canada) the first to cut rates, there

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best performing funds in the IA Global Equity Income sector.   Global Equity Income has advantages in an elevated base rate environment when compared to “conventional” global equities. This is because when base rates are higher dividend paying stocks are thought to be more likely to outperform. The argument runs as follows: The loose monetary policy, low inflation, and low rates of the first two decades of the century favoured growth stocks such as technology, as it raised the value of future cash flows— such as that realised through anticipated growth—relative

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best-performing funds in the IA Global High Yield Bond sector.   Global High Yield has been out of favour of late. Over 12 months to the end of February, UK investors have pulled £1.47bn from the sector. What’s perhaps surprising is that over the same period, they have put a similar amount into its euro equivalent. The IA’s dollar-denominated high-yield sector has seen redemptions of £2.17bn, while sterling high-yield has shed a more modest £466m. But, then, sterling high yield is of a much more modest size: the global high yield

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best-performing funds in the IA Sterling Strategic Bond sector.   Investing isn’t easy. After all, most fund managers fail to beat the market after factoring in their charges. Bond investing, if anything, is harder still, with a raft of jargon from linkers through hard and soft currencies to esoteric instruments such as “cocos”. So, it’s no surprise that even professional wealth managers running client portfolios of funds will sometimes outsource the bond portion of the portfolio to someone else who will do the entire bond mix for them. That “someone else”

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best-performing funds in the IA UK Smaller Companies sector.   UK small cap managers are an optimistic bunch, with the tide always just about to turn for their asset class. Over recent years, they’ll have needed that optimism, as the sector returned just 0.19% last year, falling 25.77% in 2022, and underperforming UK All Companies in both. How much the sector has struggled is evidenced by the fact that only the top seven (of nearly 50 funds in total) are in positive territory over three years. What’s more, since I last

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best-performing funds in the IA North America sector.   The US equity market has been much in focus over the past year as the S&P 500 giants of the Magnificent Seven reversed their precipitous declines of 2022. When we looked at the sector 12 months ago, everyone (not least me) was pessimistic about the US as recessionary clouds gathered over the world’s largest economy. Well, that’s clearly not happened, so I will accept my slice of humble American pie. Exactly why the US has avoided the anticipated downturn is not altogether

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best-performing funds in the IA Sterling Corporate Bond sector   Bonds, as we’ve been repeatedly told this year, are back. But are they worth backing? Bonds have been the asset class of choice for the year. UK investors have put £10.3bn into bond funds in the first six months of 2023. In contrast, equity funds have suffered £8.3bn of redemptions. While the value of bond principals has been hit hard as base rates have risen, this same process has, by definition, increased yields in outstanding bonds and forced new issuers to