Infrastructure and property funds were the top returning funds for Russell Investments Australian investors but have struggled to beat the respective sector average returns on both annualised and cumulative figures, according to FE Analytics.
With news that the US$293 billion ($431.7 billion) asset manager was up for sale, Money Management looked at the firm’s top performing funds.
Three out of the top five performing funds over the three time periods were infrastructure or property funds.
The Russell Global Listed Infrastructure $A Hedged A fund had an annualised return of 21.29%, 9.65%, 8.4% over one, three, and five years to 31 October, 2019, respectively.
However, the fund only beat its infrastructure sector average over one year (18.7%) and did not over three (11.19%) and five years (10.31%).
Over five years the fund’s cumulative return did not beat its sector either at 50.1% compared to the sector average of 63.24%.
The fund was followed by Russell Investments Australian Property Securities Passive that only had a one-year return of 20.99% that also did not beat its Australian listed property sector average of 21.17%.
The Russell High Dividend Australian Shares ETF followed with annualised returns of 19.5%, 9.63%, and 5.77% over one, three, and five years respectively. This fund, did beat its Australia equity income sector average across all time periods (15.1%, 8.06%. and 5.3%).
The fund also managed to beat its sector on cumulative terms over the five years to 31 October, 2019 at 32.36% compared to the sector average of 29.5%.
The Russell International Property Securities A$ Hedged A fund came in at fourth across all Russell funds with annualised returns of 18.47%, 9.35%, and 7.73% over one, three, and five years.
These returns did not beat the fund’s global property sector average over any of these time periods and returned 8.32% lower on a cumulative basis over the five years to 31 October, 2019, at 45.08% compared to the average return of 53.4%.
Rounding out the top five returning Russell funds was the Russell Australian Responsible Investment ETF that had annualised returns of 16.27% and 8.7% over one and three years to 31 October, 2019. The fund managed to beat its sector average over both time periods.
On a cumulative basis, the fund returned 28.47% over the three years, compared to 26.18% for its Australia equity income sector.
However, no Russell fund lost returns over one, three, or five years.
Top 4 performing Russell Investment funds over the three years to 31 October 2019
