What makes a good active fund and where you can find them

Closet tracker funds are dying as investors plump for passive funds or well-managed active funds. Here, we pick some of the best active funds to buy for today’s markets.

180219-active-b

Sometimes it pays to be active
(Image credit: gruizza)

With all the market turmoil over the past few weeks, it is easy to forget why it is that we the we in this case being us ordinary investors actually invest. We aren't in markets to fiddle around with complicated financial instruments in the hope of outsmarting someone else and making a quick buck. We are looking to buy into fundamentally well-run listed companies that will grow both our capital and our incomes at a price that makes sense both in absolute terms and relative to other assets.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.