In this article, I list the best performing funds over the last 5 and 10 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 calendar years (up to May 2024). 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
Peter Rutter / Will Kenney / James Clarke
Royal London Global Equity Select
1.05
Bimal Patel / Mike Willans
WS Canlife North American/WS Canlife Global Equity
0.79
Aziz Hamzaogullari
TM Natixis Loomis Sayles U.S. Equity Leaders
0.77
Albert Tsuei / Peter J. Bye
UBS US Growth
0.76
Stephen Kelly / David Shaw
AXA Framlington American Growth
0.74
Alison Porter / Graeme Clark / Richard Clode
Janus Henderson Global Technology Leaders
0.73
James Davidson
Artemis Global Income
0.73
Brad Weafer
IFSL Marlborough US Multi-Cap Income
0.70
Joseph Wolfe
BlackRock US Dynamic
0.68
Alex Tedder TR in GB
Schroder Global Equity
0.65
William Warren TR in GB
Artemis US Extended Alpha
0.64
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 May 2009 (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
Fund performance rank 2009 to 2019 (out of 118)
Fund performance rank 2019 to 2024 (out of 153)
Slater Growth
1
69
IFSL Marlborough Special Situations
2
141
Thesis Stonehage Fleming Opportunities
3
96
Liontrust Special Situations
4
67
abrdn UK Value Equity
5
22
JGF-Jupiter UK Mid Cap
6
153
Royal London UK Mid-Cap Growth
7
116
ES R&M UK Recovery
8
18
FTF Martin Currie UK Mid Cap
9
107
WS Montanaro UK Income
10
114
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 up to May 2023.
The top-performing funds over 10 years
Asia Pacific Excluding Japan
Fund
10 Year Fund Performance %
Baillie Gifford Pacific
193.53
Invesco Asian (UK)
168.65
JGF-Jupiter Merian Asia Pacific
167.72
Schroder Asian Alpha Plus
148.20
Fidelity Sustainable Asia Equity
146.38
Average
110.77
Europe Excluding UK
Fund
10 Year Fund Performance %
Man GLG Continental European Growth
225.11
Liontrust European Dynamic
220.62
BlackRock Continental European
215.56
BlackRock European Dynamic
208.28
IFSL Marlborough European Special Situations
202.09
Average
123.82
Japan
Fund
10 Year Fund Performance %
M&G Japan Smaller Companies
243.26
Fidelity Japan
209.46
WS Morant Wright Nippon Yield
208.85
FTF Martin Currie Japan Equity
198.42
Janus Henderson Japan Opportunities
193.51
Average
150.11
Mixed Investment 0%-35% Shares
Fund
10 Year Fund Performance %
TM The Beamish
64.97
Royal London Sustainable Managed Growth Trust
59.51
7IM Income Portfolio
50.72
Omnis Investments Ltd Omnis Managed Cautious
46.10
BlackRock Consensus 35
45.59
Average
29.47
Mixed Investment 20%-60% Shares
Fund
10 Year Fund Performance %
SVS The Magpie
178.36
Royal London Sustainable Diversified Trust
114.91
Artemis Monthly Distribution
89.00
AXA Global Sustainable Distribution
83.48
Rathbone Active Income and Growth Fund
80.93
Average
47.37
Mixed Investment 40%-85% Shares
Fund
10 Year Fund Performance %
Royal London Sustainable World Trust
206.55
Orbis Global Balanced
151.13
COIF Charities Investment
146.51
Liontrust Sustainable Future Managed
132.51
Thesis Juniper
130.40
Average
78.04
North America
Fund
10 Year Fund Performance %
Thesis TM Natixis Loomis Sayles U.S. Equity Leaders
In this article, I list the best performing funds over the last 5 and 10 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.
80-20 Investor
