The best and worst performing funds during Coronavirus sell off

•    Long duration bonds were the big winners in Q1 this year
•    Funds exposed to oil hit hardest
•    Brazil fared worst at a country level
•    In the UK, value funds struggled

Ryan Hughes, head of active portfolios at AJ Bell, comments:

“The end of March has brought the end of one of the most traumatic quarters for the world in a long time as the spread of Coronavirus has rapidly moved across the world causing devastation to thousands of lives. While of secondary importance to the human impact, financial markets have been hit hard during the quarter with drastically different performance across asset classes and regions.

“At an overall level, long duration bonds have been the place to be as government bonds rallied hard amid the collapse in interest rates. The standout fund was the Argonaut Absolute Return fund with an impressive 22% growth over the quarter, although many would consider the performance profile of this fund to not meet with their definition of absolute return. The Allianz Strategic Bond fund showed that active management can prosper during times of turmoil as the highly regarded Mike Riddell managed to deliver good returns in the strategic bond space.

“The collapse in the oil price weighed heavy on those funds that are directly exposed to the so called ‘black gold’ with Schroder Global Energy being the hardest hit, while at a country level Brazil was the big sufferer with country funds from the likes of HSBC and JP Morgan down around 50%.

“Looking at the UK, the winners were unsurprisingly all found in the government bond space but the losers throws up a wider range of funds. Deep value along with mid and small cap funds took a real hammering. The value space was an area that really struggled over the quarter as those companies that were already perceived by the market to have some degree of problems were punished even further with the likes of Alastair Mundy at Investec (Ninety One) and Andy Brough at Schroders both making an appearance in the biggest losers of the first quarter.

“With the world still trying to understand the full impact of Coronavirus, it is likely that markets will remain volatile in the coming quarter and a wide dispersion of returns for Q2 highly likely.”
 

Best & Worst performing funds Q1 2020 - Worldwide

Best & Worst performing funds Q1 2020 – UK only