Where Should We Invest Money Usa

The best performing funds to invest in right now In this article, I list the best performing funds over 10 years and 5 years. I also highlight the best investment fund managers in the UK. Yet you shouldn't just focus on past performance over 5 or 10 years alone.

As one of the most frequently quoted investment experts in the UK national press, including The Times and The Telegraph, I will show you how to pick the best performing funds to invest now. That is very different from simply opting for the best performing funds over the last 5 or 10 years.

In fact I would invest in hardly any of the top performing funds over the last 5 or 10 years and neither should you

Funds are inconsistent and you should invest in funds that suit the current economic and investment environment. I will show you how I successfully identify the best funds to invest in with an increased chance of performing well going forward.

First of all...the funds to avoid

Before I move on to the best funds to invest in it's also important to be aware of the funds to avoid. Unfortunately, there are a number of popular funds that should be avoided as they will hit your returns. You can download a useful list of these funds which the research calls 'dog funds'. So feel free to download the guide and use it as a reference point.

Best performing investment funds to invest in

The 10 Top Performing Fund Managers

Fund managers seldom outperform the market in the short term and almost never over the long term. Yet that doesn't mean you should just invest in index trackers or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). There is still a place for picking the best active investment fund managers. However, the top performing investment fund managers historically won't outperform the market or their peers all of the time. The table in the next section of this article emphasises the impact on the returns of your misplaced loyalty to even the best fund managers. The key is to invest in the best funds when the investment environment suits them and to ditch them when it doesn't, in favour of their peers most likely to outperform. You should NEVER invest your money with a fund manager for the long term.

The table below shows the 10 top performing fund managers over the last five years (last updated September 2021). I analysed the returns of thousands of fund managers versus the level of risk they took with investors' money to arrive at the final table. The best investment fund managers do not gamble with investors' money, instead, they invest it strategically to minimise any losses. The Sharpe Ratio is a measure of the level of excess return the fund manager earns for the extra risk he/she has taken. The higher the figure the better.

Fund Manager	Main fund managed	Sharpe ratio
Nigel Ashfield	ARC TIME Freehold Income Authorised	1.71
Rosemary Banyard	VT Downing Unique Opportunities	1.63
Tom Slater	Baillie Gifford Long Term Global Growth Investment	1.44
Carlos Moreno / Thomas Brown	Premier Miton European Opportunities	1.40
Anthony Eaton	VT Downing Global Investors	1.35
Jeremy Gleeson	AXA Framlington Global Technology	1.33
Richard Clode	Janus Henderson Global Technology Leaders	1.31
Gary Robinson	Baillie Gifford American	1.30
Will Sutcliffe	Baillie Gifford Emerging Markets Leading Companies	1.22
Terry Smith	Fundsmith Equity	1.15

How to pick the best performing funds to invest in now

The key to successful investing is to pick the funds most likely to outperform their peers in the future. That is not the same as picking the funds or fund managers with the best performance over the last 5 or 10 years.

By way of example if you had picked the 10 best performing funds over 10 years leading up to September 2016 (from the UK All Companies sector) and then invested in them over the next 5 years you'd have been in for a surprise. As the table below shows, over the next 5 years you would have been better off investing in alternative funds within the same sector.

Fund	Performance rank September 2006 to September 2016 (out of 133)	Performance rank September 2016 to September 2021 (out of 178)
Slater Growth	1	4
Liontrust Special Situations	2	29
Marlborough Special Situations	3	6
Royal London UK Mid-Cap Growth	4	23
Franklin UK Mid Cap	5	27
ASI UK Value Equity	6	72
BMO UK Mid-Cap	7	155
Threadneedle UK Mid 250	8	47
Marlborough Multi-Cap Growth	9	14
Schroder UK Opportunities	10	163

So how can you choose the best funds to invest in right now? The world of fund management brainwashes investors into thinking that you have to buy and hold a fund manager or fund. Yet why should you? The evidence overwhelmingly shows that no fund manager outperforms in every market condition. The fact that a fund manager or fund might top a table of the best performing managers (or funds) over 5 years is just a coincidence of the timeframe used. Use another timeframe (as shown above) and they won't come anywhere near the top. This is true of every fund, even the most popular investment funds.

So if you can't rely on long term performance tables to pick funds that are more likely to perform well in the future then how can you do it?

The key to investing is to choose the best funds to invest in for the current environment and to use a process that screens out the noise and emotional headlines and focuses on the fundamentals. It's a very simple process that I explain in a short email series How to become a successful DIY investor. In the emails I show you:

The most important investment lesson you will ever learn based on over 100 years of research and experience
The simple and easy to use tool that will help you beat the market
The investment process fund managers want to keep to themselves.
How to know which funds to buy and which to sell, in minutes.

I have used the technique to help investors outperform the market and professional fund managers using only a few minutes a month, using 80-20 Investor. You can read their reviews of 80-20 Investor as well as see the performance in the widget at the foot of this article. I also successfully run £50,000 of my own money live on the site to show how simple it is. 80-20 Investor helps you to simply decide the funds to invest in via your existing fund platform. Find out more about how the service works and take advantage of a 30 day FREE trial.

The top-performing funds over 5 years and 10 years

The tables below show the best performing funds to invest in over 5 years and 10 years. All these funds can be held in a Stocks and Shares ISA or a Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP). The percentage return shown is the total return figures which assumes all income and dividends are reinvested. The funds are grouped by fund sector so you can see the best performing funds for the most popular fund sectors.

While the funds below would have been the best funds to invest in over the last 10 years and 5 years, within their respective sectors, there is no evidence that they will continue to perform well as I explained earlier. In fact, taking such a long term view masks long periods of underperformance as I explained in the section above, titled How to pick the best performing funds to invest in now.

The data below shows the 5 and 10 year performance periods ending 13th September 2021.

The top-performing funds over 10 years

Asia Pacific Excluding Japan

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
Baillie Gifford Pacific	379.73
Jupiter Merian Asia Pacific	235.44
Schroder Asian Alpha Plus	232.03
Barings Eastern Trust	226.10
JPM Asia Growth	214.40
Average	144.97

Europe Excluding UK

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
Baillie Gifford European	447.38
BlackRock European Dynamic	431.43
Marlborough European Multi-Cap	420.36
BlackRock Continental European	394.2
Allianz Continental European	355.73
Average	214.12

Japan

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
Baillie Gifford Japanese	286.22
JPM Japan	274.67
AXA Framlington Japan	253.60
Fidelity Japan Smaller Companies	224.64
Barings Japan Growth Trust	203.38
Average	180.76

Mixed Investment 0%-35% Shares

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
Omnis Investments Ltd Omnis Managed Cautious	98.07
Vanguard LifeStrategy 20% Equity	74.59
Sarasin Income & Reserves	74.53
Fidelity Multi Asset Income	69.59
Threadneedle Managed Bond Focused	68.06
Average	50.63

Mixed Investment 20%-60% Shares

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
Royal London Sustainable Diversified Trust	186.41
AXA Global Distribution	132.68
Premier Miton Multi-Asset Distribution	120.24
Invesco European High Income (UK)	120.08
AXA Ethical Distribution	117.79
Average	72.98

Mixed Investment 40%-85% Shares

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
Royal London Sustainable World Trust	333.82
Liontrust Sustainable Future Managed	260.00
Baillie Gifford Managed	259.76
COIF Charities Investment	209.31
Omnis Investments Ltd Omnis Managed Adventurous	187.62
Average	113.38

North America

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
Baillie Gifford American	998.91
UBS US Growth	512.31
FTF Franklin US Opportunities	475.57
AXA Framlington American Growth	472.96
Thesis Eldon	440.09
Average	345.18

Sterling Corporate Bond

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
Janus Henderson Inst Long Dated Credit	105.48
Schroder Sterling Corporate Bond	98.95
Royal London Corporate Bond	87.97
Rathbone Ethical Bond Fund	85.04
L&G Managed Monthly Income Trust	83.44
Average	61.06

Sterling High Yield

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
Schroder High Yield Opportunities	119.35
Invesco High Yield (UK)	119.18
Baillie Gifford High Yield Bond	92.83
ASI High Yield Bond	87.12
AXA Global High Income	84.80
Average	75.92

Sterling Strategic Bond

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
GAM Credit Opportunities GBP	145.30
AXA Framlington Managed Income	113.36
Artemis High Income	104.04
Invesco Monthly Income Plus (UK)	98.26
Allianz Strategic Bond	98.08
Average	59.93

UK All Companies

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
Jupiter UK Mid Cap	354.78
Marlborough Special Situations	329.60
Premier Miton Ethical	324.12
AXA Framlington UK Mid Cap	307.99
Slater Growth	305.64
Average	140.25

UK Smaller Companies

Fund	10 Year Fund Performance %
ES R&M UK Equity Smaller Companies	537.20
Liontrust UK Smaller Companies	505.11
LF Gresham House UK Micro Cap	429.15
Marlborough UK Micro Cap Growth	414.00
Fidelity UK Smaller Companies	404.19
Average	277.81

The top-performing funds over 5 years