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The Markets
February 23, 2018

The Stock MarketsWhen we were about to start writing this piece about the stock markets, we were going to talk about how placid they had been for some time, and had been showing good growth.

Then they fell…a lot! On January 15th, the FTSE100 reached a high of 7,777, and now at the time of writing this (February 8th) it has fallen to 7,195; a whopping 7% reduction in a matter of days.

From what we can see, there appears to be no logical conclusion for this, but there were some bad economic factors coming from the US, so people have basically panicked.

The overall outlook isn’t bad. Some emerging nations like Brazil (for example) are doing well and coming out of quite a long recession. Japan and the US are doing well, Europe is doing OK, and the UK is doing OK, albeit not as good as the rest of Europe.

We categorise investment funds by risk, and the three main levels are low, middle and high. There is also very low and very high risk, but none of our clients tend to want to use them.

Low Risk Funds

There are quite a few global funds that we recommend; two of the most consistent ones are Royal London Sustainable World Trust, achieving 20.5% over the last year, and Premier Multi Asset Growth & Income, achieving 14.3%.

Middle Risk Funds

There are more global funds in this category than any other, e.g. Old Mutual Global Equity, giving 18.5% growth, which is the most consistent one. One of our long-running excellent performers is Lindsell Train UK Equity, giving 20.7%.

High Risk Funds

The most consistent fund in this category is AXA Framlington Japan, giving 23.4%, but Unicorn UK Growth, giving 36.1%, has done very well recently. High risk is the category where you get a wider variety of funds, and is currently populated mainly by Asian (in particular Japanese) and Technology funds. UK Mid Cap also seems to be making a comeback here as well. As you might guess, there is less consistency with these high risk funds as opposed to middle and low risk, but that is the nature of the beast, so to speak.

When you do any investment, you need a good spread of funds to invest in, and you need to watch them regularly. Funds are like children – you can’t take your eyes off them!!! At MAP, this is what we do. It’s in our nature and our investment process to keep our eyes on your client’s money and try to make it grow.

For any enquiries or just an initial chat, contact Andrew Singleton on 0345 241 1808 or e-mail us at enquiries@mapfinances.co.uk.

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