Vintage Report 2023

First and foremost, if you’d like to skip my covering pre-amble and go straight to the Vintage Report 2023, just head here to download your free copy.

As we alluded to in our covering blog from 2022, we don’t particularly enjoy publishing the Vintage Report each summer. And no, not because it is a hefty research project, but rather it highlights the stark truth that the majority almost all of the investment funds that we analyse just are not good enough.

To put this year’s findings into context, more than £1.8 trillion, (yes 1.8 trillion pounds) is sitting in funds which fail to consistently beat an undemanding benchmark.

A reminder.  To achieve a Vintage rating, a fund must be in the top 40% of performers in its own sector 60% of the time. Basically – be a bit better than average, for just over half the time.

The “time” is the 120 overlapping 6-monthly periods in the last 10 years, with a higher weighting being given to more recent periods.

97% of funds failed to beat this benchmark, up from 96% in 2022.

Put another way, this means that only 3% of funds achieved this undemanding benchmark.

How does 3% stack up compared to the prior 7 years of research?

So as you can see, 2023 is the worst report yet, and is the second consecutive year where there are less than 100 Vintage rated funds.

But why is this the case?

The last 3 years has seen quite a few structural changes to global markets and investment styles. The (stuttering) rotation from Growth to Value is a case in point. [For more on Value funds, start here]

For example, the last two years has seen typical Growth fund houses, such as Baillie Gifford, sliding down the Vintage ratings. The average Vintage rating for BG funds in 2023 is 41%, down from 45% in 2022, and an even steeper decline from 49% in 2021. This isn’t us having a bash at Baillie Gifford, they are just the most renowned (and largest) Growth manager currently out there.

So, while the Growth funds have been the kingpin of investing for much of the last decade, that trend has already begun to unwind itself. So, if Growth funds are slipping, shouldn’t Value funds come in and replace them as Vintage Rated?

In time, yes. However, the rotation to Value is still (we believe) in its infancy, so many Value funds will not start getting a Vintage Rating until the next couple of years. This is perhaps the biggest drawback to our Vintage Research, it can be slow to take into account these rotations. Although they do occur fairly sporadically, it is something to bear in mind.

Are funds that don’t achieve a Vintage Rating automatically a bad fund?

No, we aren’t saying these are all bad funds. You will notice if you search some of the Ugly funds in our Fund Search tool they will be 5-star rated, so it is important to remember the difference between our two rating systems:

Dynamic Fund Ratings - These are based on a form of short-term momentun investing, which means buying an investment (in this case a fund) which is already performing well on the likelihood that it will continue to perform well.  The short-term period is typically 6 months.

Vintage Fund Ratings - These identify the funds that consistently outperform their peers over the long term.  This longer-term period is 10 years.

We could talk for pages and pages about this year’s Vintage Report, but we also know that by now you will just want to read the thing!

So feel free to request your free copy here, and if you have any questions/feedback or would like us to talk some more about our Vintage research in next month's teleconference do let us know and we will allow time for this.