The Global Income fund Heatmap

Following on from the update to the UK equity income Heatmap, which empowers 80-20 Investor members to quickly build a portfolio of UK income funds to provide a sustainable growing income, here I update the Global Income fund Heatmap

An important part of building a sustainable income stream is to diversify it, and that includes geographically. There are countless income opportunities for investors if they broaden their horizons and invest in shares globally. Just because you are based in the UK doesn't mean you should only invest in the UK.

Global equity income is a relatively new area and as such there are far fewer global equity income funds to chose from, compared to UK equity income funds. However, there are still some good opportunities. That is why I've applied the same rigorous research process to the global equity income sector as I did to its UK focused peer.

How to use the Global Income Heatmap

When choosing global income funds to complement your UK equity income portfolio you want to choose funds that have:

• a decent current yield (anything above 3.4% is good)
• that have recent average annual payout growth in excess of inflation, which is typically around 2% (although only a few funds grew their payout in 2020 as a result of the economic damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic)
• have a track record of growing its payout year on year even when other funds have cut theirs.

While the choice is limited there is still quite a big disparity between current yields and commitment to growing payouts (even though few have a long track record) which is why research such as this is crucial. You can quickly see how the Income Heatmap turns building and diversifying an income portfolio from an expensive laborious process into a simple and quick job.

The Global Income Heatmap

Key: a blue box indicates that the annual payout was higher that year than in the previous year. A red box indicates that the payout was cut compared to the previous year. An empty (white) box means that the fund was not in existence at that point in time.

Download the global equity income 2024 heatmap pdf

If a fund is not on the list this will be because it either does not have a sufficient dividend history or size. Or it will be because it is not a member of the Global Equity Income sector.

Also some of the most consistent income payers are investment trusts (the above funds are unit trusts). I have also produced an Investment trust income heatmap. Most investment trusts even managed to grow their income payouts in 2020.

In order to diversify your income you may also want to look at the UK Equity Income Heatmap and the Alternative asset income heatmaps.