Fund Objective

Its aim is to achieve long term capital growth.

View on Past Performance

A quiet news month this time around so I thought I would write about something different. For years funds of funds have been heavily criticised for double charging (note the word double here). Numerous newspaper articles and, more depressingly, trade journal articles have talked about funds of funds and only mentioned one matter; double charging. Ignored are the benefits in terms of superior performance, the asset allocation advantages, the tax efficiency for replacing poorly performing funds, the access to less well known boutiques, the constant research and monitoring. Need I go on? Apparently the only thing one needs to know about funds of funds is that they charge more.Double in fact. That's 100% extra. Don't touch them, not even with a bargepole is the popular conclusion.So when this month Lipper Fitzrovia, the well respected research agency that has a habit of getting to the bottom of things, announced that funds of funds' total expense ratios (TERs) were in fact on average only 50% more than single manager funds (not 100% as had been widely reported for many years) one might have expected some apologetic articles. Not a bit of it!

Future Expectations

Rather than a press reaction to this news along the lines of "Shock horror, funds of funds much cheaper than first thought"we had a lead article in a well respected trade journal along the lines of "Shock Horror, funds of funds 50% more expensive". Boo, hiss, with all the venom normally reserved for the Wicked Stepsisters in Cinderella.

Fund Details