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

Some investors may get confused in investment conversations about portfolios which contain more than one asset type (bonds, cash, commodities, equities, precious metals, etc.) because some refer to such a portfolio as a mixed-assets portfolio while others call the same portfolio a multi-asset portfolio. So, what is the difference between these two fund types? Generally speaking, mixed-assets funds have a long history as one-stop asset allocation products for all investors since these funds invest in a given mixture of bonds and equities (in some cases these funds also have a small bucket for gold). That said, the classic conservative (up

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best-performing funds in the IA Mixed Investment 40-85% Shares sector.   This is the more equity-heavy of the Investment Association’s three mixed investment sectors, and it’s proving to be the most popular. It has attracted £1.18bn over the 12 months to the end of July, in contrast to Mixed Investment 0-35% Shares, down £1.5bn, and Mixed Investment 20-60% Shares, which has shed £4.24bn. This phenomenon likely isn’t multi-asset investors chasing performance, as people tend to stay within their risk-tolerance tramlines, so it’s a little difficult to determine why the aggressive mixed

Using the Lipper Leaders scoring system to analyse the best-performing funds in the IA Mixed Investment 40-85% Shares sector   Fortune has favoured equities over the past few years, and that’s been the case with Mixed Investment sectors. In March, we looked at the Mixed Investment 20-60% Shares—the ‘middling sort’ of the mixed asset stable. This month, we turn out attentions to its wilder sibling—the multi-asset sector with the highest permitted equity exposure. Over the past few years, higher equity exposure (which entails greater risk, defined in terms of portfolio volatility) has been a good bet: five-year average returns for

Multi-asset funds have been a hot topic for European investors since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis because there were some funds that showed very limited losses despite the rough market environment. Investor interest reached even higher after the euro crisis in 2011 as a number of funds continued to show quite a stable performance pattern. Graph 1: Net Flows in Multi-Asset Funds (in bn EUR) Source: Lipper from Refinitiv As multi-asset funds were the best-selling asset type in Europe overall for 2017, some market observers predicted investor interested peaked that year and may not return to those levels

Even though the topic of proper classification of mixed-asset funds doesn’t sound like a point of particular interest, it has raised issues for fund promoters, fund selectors, and investors alike. It gathered a lot of interest during the ”Petersberger Treffen,” a conference organized by the German consultant Drescher&Cie in Cologne on December 7, 2017. Once upon a time – funds were simply constructed In the good old days of the investment industry the life of fund selectors and investors was much easier, since equity funds invested straightforwardly in equities—as did their fixed income peers with bonds. Even mixed-asset funds were

The German asset manager Flossbach von Storch (FvS) was one of the major winners of the group awards during the Thomson Reuters Lipper Fund Awards 2017; the company not only won the mixed-asset large category for Europe, but it also won this award for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In addition, it was a topic of interest that FvS has moved from the small-asset manager category to the large-asset manager category in 2017. FvS showed an impressive growth story over the past eight years, mainly driven by its flagship product–Flossbach von Storch Multiple Opportunities R (LU0323578657). During a meeting in Cologne, where FvS

This fund manager briefing reviews a meeting with Sergej Crasovschi, founder and CEO of Portfolio Advice GmbH, which acts as advisor to Absolute Return Multi Premium Fonds (DE000A2AGM18). The fund was launched on June 15, 2016, as a Germany-domiciled UCITS-compliant mutual fund by Universal Investment GmbH, a German white-label fund promoter. Since the name looks as though it would be tempting to investors, I wanted to find out whether the fund is just another multi-asset product with a good marketing approach, or if the fund’s strategy really is different and enables investors to achieve their investment goals. The fund proposition