Which funds were the top performers in June 2022?

How did funds do in June 2022?

Let us know what you think of the current market situation by posting a comment.

For the really super time-poor the story in June can be summarised in three words. Big, global and energy. That’s what DIY investors were buying.

There’s another key theme coming through and that is passive funds. 6 funds appear on the bestselling lists of at least 2 major platforms and 4 of these are passive. Low-cost global giant Vanguard have a substantial footprint at the moment.

This feels odd to investment purists. The rulebook says that when markets are falling, ‘passive funds’ are not your best bet because you cannot be selective about removing the sectors and regions which are really out of favour. And momentum can drag these down, and you know they are going to be dragged down, and you can’t do much about it. The active managers will tell you that they can cherry-pick so avoid compulsory exposure to out of favour things. But investors are saying otherwise. I wonder how much of this is general nervousness, and the lack of conviction about what to pick, so it’s easiest to plump for a broad church cheap passive fund to stay in the markets, because frankly hardly anything stands out as very appealing right now. All 4 of the passive fund bestsellers are global equity funds.

Investors are also staying with Terry Smith, manager of the bestselling Fundsmith Equity fund. That fund is down 11.3% over the last 12 months as I write this, so people are picking this fund up more cheaply than they could a year ago.

With 71% of the fund in the US market, and with 20% allocated to software and computer services, it’s largely a play on US tech. Top single holding Microsoft (8.7% of the fund) announced on Tuesday this week that it was laying off 1% of its staff globally. I leave you to make a call on what the short-term future looks like for this undeniably smart fund manager who is investing in difficult markets with this fund.

Over in planet Investment Trust and the big guns are top of the pops. Scottish Mortgage and City of London and Ruffer. There are some interesting more thematic picks here too – BlackRock Mining Trust is still popular and maybe then we’re all picking Greencoat UK Wind too for some moral salvation!? Not just moral salvation – this trust is also up 14% over the last 12 months. And Exchange Traded Funds are a popular way for investors to pick up exposure to the FTSE or the S&P over in the States.

One investment which has had a torrid time recently is of course crypto. This is perhaps bizarrely very correlated to mainstream markets – but on speed. So when global markets are doing well, crypto booms. And when global markets are doing badly, crypto crashes. It behaves almost like an even more poorly understood derivative!

We held a super interesting webinar on crypto last week with eToro. We’ve pulled out a few key snippets which might be of interest. Starting with this 2-minute watch on why Bitcoin has fallen so much in recent months. Views remain divided on whether this asset type is on a one way path to oblivion. Or is having a blip before it ascends and grows and continues its march into the mainstream. Our 50 minute webinar which you can watch on catch-up here will give you all you need to work out where you stand on this!

For a more measured approach to investing, you might like to read a featured article this month on the benefits of what is called a core and satellite approach to investing. I loosely think of this as having a plate with mostly boring carbohydrate like mash (think low-cost passive bland-ish but nice!) and a small portion of steak (e.g. active global picks) with some chimichanga sauce (e.g. hardcore active emerging market thematic plays!)

I hope these lists and updates are useful. If you have any questions or suggestions for future focus and features, please let us know . Thanks for reading.

If you’re looking for some inspiration this month, then as usual we bring you our lists of the best-selling funds across all major retail platforms. I always like having a look at the consensus view, which does not mean I always follow it.

What do you think? Let us know by adding a comment below.

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