a:8:{i:1;a:4:{s:7:"caption";s:4:"Gold";s:11:"description";s:875:"

Gold

Gold funds outstripped all competition in the first half of 2016 according to FE Analytics data, albeit off a pretty low base, having done pretty poorly in the previous few years. Indeed, of the top 10 best performing funds, seven were gold funds and one was a general mining fund.

The clear winner was the MFM Junior Gold Fund, at only £11m it is unlikely to feature on many buy lists but it produced a more than creditable 165% return in the first six months of the year, likewise the even smaller SF Peterhouse Smaller Companies fund at £2.1m is actually under the £10m lower limit, but we thought we may as well include it.

If it is excluded, then Invesco Perpetual’s Japanese Smaller Companies fund scrapes into the top 10 with a creditable 50.9% return, even more creditable when the losers are revealed.

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Brazil

Brazilian funds from HSBC and JP Morgan rounded out the top 10 best performing funds with returns of 59% and 52% respectively.

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Smaller Companies

The JP Morgan UK Smaller Companies fund was the best of the worst performers down just over 17%, it too was hit by the falls in domestically focused companies within the UK equity space.

It was by no means the only smaller companies fund to see a decline over the course of the days following the EU referendum, nor was it the only UK fund to struggle, as can be seen in the following two slides.

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Recovery

Mark Slater’s £30m MFM Slater Recovery Fund is the second best of the worst performers for the first half of 2016, placing ninth with a decline of 17.8%, but is one of many UK focused funds on the list and much of the decline came in the days following the UK’s vote to leave the EU.

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Biotechnology

Biotechnology funds also struggled in the first half, after having a rather good time of things over three years.

AXA Framlington Biotech and Pictet Biotech, in fifth and sixth place respectively fell 18.22% and 18.2%, while Candriam Equities L Biotechnology did marginally better, down 17.85%.

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UK All Companies

If there is one primary trend to pull from the data on the worst performing funds, it is that UK funds, particularly those with a bias toward domestically focused stocks struggled.

The worst of these and the third worst performer over all over the first six months of the year was the Jupiter UK Growth Fund, which produced a decline of 19.95%. The SLI UK Equity Unconstrained Fund fell 18%, placing seventh overall.

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Long/short equity

Two long/short equity absolute return funds made an appearance in the list of the five worst performing funds.

Barry Norris’s Argonaut Absolute Return Fund fell 20.3% to take second spot, while the City Financial Absolute Equity Fund, run by David Crawford, fell 19.8%.

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Japan Opportunities

The worst performer for the first six months of the year, was the Neptune Japan Opportunities Fund. Run by Chris Taylor, the £285.7m has been struggling for some time, but was hit by worries over the long term efficacy of Abenomics.

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The best and worst funds of the first half

Japan Opportunities

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