Gold and technology remain ahead of rival funds and sectors, according to new research released by Willis Owen.
The investment platform has published fresh tables detailing the top 10 best performing sectors and top 10 performing funds during July 2019, with technology and gold leading both respectively.
According to figures sourced by FE analytics, which measure performance from 30th June to 31st July 2019 in pounds sterling on a total return basis, technology and telecommunications have enjoyed a percentage return of 7.97 percent. The result places them in front of other significant investment sectors such as North American Smaller Companies (7.39), North America (7.14) and Japanese Smaller Companies (6.33).
In contrast, UK Direct Property was revealed as the lowest performing sector of 0.15 percent, while UK Smaller Companies (0.2), Targeted Absolute Return (0.53), and Sterling High Yield (0.78) filled up the proceeding lowest ranked positions.
From a fund perspective, the vast majority of the top 10 is centred around gold. MFM Junior Gold has soared ahead of its competitors with a percentage return of 22.04 percent, with HC Charteris Gold & Precious Metals (20.05), Merian Gold And Silver (15.79), Investec Global Gold (15.44) and LF Ruffer Gold (14.67) rounding off the top five. Outside of gold, Neptune Global Smaller Companies finished 10th in the table with a return of 10.74 percent.
Negative returns plagued the rankings for worst performing funds with VT Oxeye Hedged Income Option with a return of -6.25 percent, MFS Meridian Global Energy (-4.96) and SVS Church House Deep Value Investments (-4.62) finished in the bottom three. Meanwhile, a couple of Korea-based funds featured on the table, including Invesco Korean Equity and Barings Korea Trust.
Adrian Lowcock, head of Personal Investing, Willis Owen noted that the agreement between China and the US to restart trade negotiations alongside “big changes in direction from the Fed on interest rates” has resulted in the positive performance of US and technology sectors in the markets.
He also noted the various concerns troubling investors which has contributed to gold’s success.
“However, doubts around the direction of the global economy continued to weigh on investors and as a result gold was in demand helping to drive up the price of gold miners as well with MFM Junior Gold leading the way. Gold has languished for some time and been out of favour amongst investors but will look more attractive in a low interest rate environment with investors returning to the precious metal,” he said.
Commenting on the worst-performing ten funds, he outlined that it was dominated by targeted absolute return funds because the asset class is finding the “global macro environment” challenging, while the performance of the Korean funds and two UK Smaller companies’ funds reflects “the poor performance of the sector.”
He also highlighted the concerns and uncertainty over Brexit and its affect on defensive assets.
He said: “Brexit continues to weigh on the UK property market whilst retail continues to struggle on the high street. The top 10 worst performing sectors are dominated by the more defensive assets with the exception of UK Smaller Companies which put in a small positive return. The UK smaller companies sectors are naturally more domestically focused so as the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit increased so have concerns that the UK will enter a recession shortly afterwards.”
Willis Owen has approximately £1 billion of funds under management. It has acted as an intermediary for over 150,000 customers and hundreds of millions of pounds worth of investments.
