High-profile investors Neil Woodford, Mark Barnett and Tom Dobell run three of the five most heavily sold funds by clients of the Share Centre in January.
Mr Woodford’s £7.1bn Woodford Equity Income fund has lost 8 per cent over the past year, and in that time the assets have shrunk from £10.1bn to the level on 19 February of £7.1bn.
This was the most sold fund on The Share Centre during January.
Next most sold was the £2.3bn First State Global Listed Infrastructure fund. This has lost 3 per cent over the past year.
Many investors take the view that infrastructure assets will perform poorly as bond yields rise.
This is because investors view the dividends of companies in the infrastructure arena as being almost as safe as the income from a bond.
So when bond yields are low, as they have been for most of the past decade, infrastructure becomes more attractive.
But bond yields have been rising steadily since the end of last year, rendering infrastructure assets relatively less attractive.
The next most sold off fund was the £9.7bn Invesco Perpetual High Income fund.
This is run by Mark Barnett and has lost 3 per cent over the past year to 19 February.
Mr Barnett, in common with Mr Woodford, has focused his funds on stocks that derive the greater part of their earnings from within the UK as he feels the outlook for the UK economy is much brighter than the market currently expects.
Mr Dobell runs the £3bn M&G Recovery fund, which has shrunk in size by about £7bn in the past five years.
The fund is among the bottom 25 per cent of products in its sector over the past three and five years.
The fund has outperformed the sector over the past six months as the contrarian value style favoured by Mr Dobell has come back into favour.
david.thorpe@ft.com
