Aussie investors have more choice than ever when it comes to global share funds. Livewire’s James Marley shines a light on five funds that are leading the way in returns.

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For the best part of the last two decades, just a handful of locally-based global share funds dominated the conversation regarding offshore exposure. Platinum Asset Management and Magellan Financial Group are the first two that spring to mind. The success of both firms paved the way for a bevy of new managers offering Aussie investors exposure to the vast opportunity in global share markets.

In addition, global firms have increasingly sought to distribute their various global equity funds to Australian investors.

A quick filter of the global share offerings in Livewire's Fund Marketplace shows that investors have more than 50 managers to choose from, many of which have multiple global share strategies.

Emerging managers are now starting to establish meaningful track records and are attracting the attention of investors. A recent report from ETF provider BetaShares showed that global share funds listed on the ASX run by local outfits Hyperion and Munro Partners are attracting significant inflows alongside the big ETF providers.

Image: Top 10 ETF Issuer Flows - YTD 2021 (Source: BetaShares November 2021 ETF Review)

With the rise of these new names, I thought it would be interesting to run a simple screen to see which global managers have been shooting the lights out. Read on to see the five highest returning global share funds from the Livewire Funds Marketplace.

Returns vs performance

Before we dive into the funds, I thought it was important to say a few words on returns vs performance because it is one of the more controversial topics when assessing investment products.

All I am looking at below is the total return of each of the funds based on the data we source from Morningstar. Who doesn't want to know which funds had the highest returns?

But just looking at returns glosses over other important performance measures, such as the amount of risk a manager has taken to achieve those returns. Some funds are explicitly designed to deliver steady and reliable returns with low levels of volatility – all attributes that are appealing to many investors.

The five highest returning global share funds in Australia

These are the filters I applied to generate the list of five funds set out in the table below.

Investment Type: Managed Funds (187)

The Livewire Funds Marketplace allows you to filter for Managed Funds, ETFs, Listed Investment Companies (LICs) or Listed Investment Trusts (LITs).

**There are currently 187 Managed Funds listed on Livewire, if a product is not listed it won't appear in the results.**

Asset Class: Global Shares (59)

There are currently seven asset classes that enable you to navigate the available options. These include Fixed Income, Australian and Global Shares, Multi Assets, Alternatives and Cash.

Performance View: Growth Since Inception (Highest)

Self-explanatory – this automatically sorts the list of funds to show returns from highest to lowest. You can also sort by fees.

The fund must have at least 5-years' of performance history (36)

This was a manual step that I introduced and was purely to filter for funds with decent performance history. That's not to say there aren't good managers with less than 5-years of track record, and I know plenty of investors that actively seek newly established funds.

*Data provided by Morningstar.

Take a closer look

On most of the fund profiles on Livewire, you'll find a Fund Manager Q&A that includes six essential questions to help investors better understand the fund's objectives. These short Q&As are helpful for investors looking to understand the philosophy, objective, fees, process, alignment and risk of the fund.

I've included links to the fund profiles of each of the funds in the table above. Click on the images to be taken to the detailed fund profile.

The Hyperion Global Growth Companies Fund

Return since inception: 23.73% p.a.

MANAGED FUND

Hyperion Global Growth Companies Fund (Managed Fund)

Global Shares

Munro Global Growth Fund

Return since inception: 17.28% p.a.

MANAGED FUND

Munro Global Growth Fund

Global Shares

Forager International Shares Fund

Return since inception: 16.97% p.a.

MANAGED FUND

Forager International Shares Fund

Global Shares

Claremont Global Fund

Return since inception: 16.74% p.a.

MANAGED FUND

Claremont Global Fund

Global Shares

State Street Climate ESG Equity Fund

Return since inception: 16.23% p.a.

MANAGED FUND

State Street Climate ESG International Equity Fund

Global Shares

Explore Livewire's Funds Marketplace

I hope that the article helped give you a few tips for exploring the investment products that you can find in Livewire's Funds Marketplace. This is a new initiative on the platform, and we'll be adding more products and filtering tools that we hope will help you make more successful investment decisions.

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Disclosure: I own units in the Hyperion Global Growth Fund in my SMSF. I manage investments on behalf of my children that own units in the Magellan Global Fund.

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