JAMES CONEY: It's a miracle - all of my investment funds are up this year

By James Coney for the Daily Mail
Published: 00:00 GMT, 24 December 2014 | Updated: 09:26 GMT, 24 December 2014
While Mrs C is busy wrapping presents and the Coney Juniors are pulling down the decorations (and often the tree), I try to sneak away from the ensuing chaos and have a look at how my investments have performed. What a jolly soul I am.
Anyway, there was at least a minor Christmas miracle in this annual moment of reflection: all of my funds were up over the year. It’s a considerable improvement on this time last year, and just goes to highlight what a successful time this has been for most mainstream investments.
Among the funds I invest in is Invesco Perpetual High Income — it is a stalwart for many savers, and even after star manager Neil Woodford left I stuck with it. This is up 11 per cent this year, and has grown every year for the past five: that’s what I call a solid performer.

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Investments: Among the funds I invest in is Invesco Perpetual High Income, which is up 11 per cent this year, says James Coney
I’m more surprised at the results from two more risky funds I’ve got: Aberdeen Emerging Markets Equity and First State Asia Pacific Leaders.
The former is a nerve-jangling investment to hold. Massively up one year, then down heavily the next. This year it rose 3 per cent. The manager has got a lot of the cash in Brazil and its economy has been slow.
And 16 per cent of it is in China, which despite rumours of a demise is still plodding along with good annual growth and I suspect is holding up the performance of this fund.
I’ve held the First State fund for a while and it is a roller-coaster, yet somehow, it’s delivered almost 20 per cent this year — which by any marker is pretty good, as well as beating its rivals by about 10 per cent.
This fund has been propped up by India, where about a quarter of the money has been invested.
Though it can be nerve-racking, this is a fund I still regularly save in to — which in some way helps iron out the big bumps in performance.
Another one I like is Threadneedle European Select. I bought this after meeting the fund’s very convincing manager and falling for what he was trying to achieve.
It buys good value European companies, such as L’Oreal, Swedish bank Handelsbanken, Unilever, Nestle, which it believes have products or business models that will grow no matter what the economies do.
So what, if any, was the rotten egg among these marvellous souffles? BlackRock Gold & General — a fund which invests in gold and mining companies. It was actually up 3 per cent this year, but that followed catastrophic falls over the past three years.
I can’t quite bring myself to sell up, even though I’m conscious that this would be the right thing to do.
The problem is that this fund is down more than 50 per cent since I first bought it. That means it now has to grow by more than 100 per cent to get me back where it started. Gulp!
What a look at my investments doesn’t reveal is the big call I made at the start of the year. That was to ditch the Neptune Russia & Greater Russia fund at a loss. This decision was prompted by Russia’s conflict with the Ukraine.
Since then, things have gone from bad to worse —– down 41 per cent over the year, a bigger fall than in each of the previous two years. And with the drop in the oil price, things don’t look set to improve soon. Next year promises to be a major one for investment companies, as the new pension reforms could create a generation of self-investors.
Stock markets will rise and fall. There’s always an element of luck and skill with picking funds.
But we’ll be there to hold your hand every step of the way and help you make the right decisions for your life savings.

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