The investment funds category labeled as ‘other’ by any data gatherer such as Morningstar, Lipper or a national trade body, will rarely gain much attention due to the obscurity of its components.
That changed in January when these funds had the highest return, at 4.1%. This beat the average return from all categories of 2.9%, with equities second at 3.6%.
But to receive that return, investors would have risked investing in Russian equity funds leveraged by three times, and similar funds that Thomson Reuters Lipper cannot easily categorise. The Russian funds benefitted from movements in the rouble.
Guaranteed and protected funds are also part of the ‘other’ category, said Otto Christian Kober, Lipper’s global head of methodology, who wrote Lipper’s January fund flow report.
Cummulative returns from ‘other’ funds for the 12 months to the end of January were 12.4% – but returns for from these funds fall back into obscurity over three years, with a loss 2.5%.
In its wider January report, Lipper also said that assets under management (AUM) over the 12 months to the end of January increased by a substantial $4.2 trillion (€4 trillion).
The 12.5% growth in the 12-month period included $583.5 billion of estimated net inflows, which took AUM in global investment funds to $38 trillion.
In January alone there was a $901 billion growth in AUM, of which positive market performance added $806.3 billion.
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