KEY POINTS:
Wholesale funds with investments in New Zealand shares have taken a beating in the past three months and the median return is down 3.9 per cent, according to a quarterly survey by investment research firm Mercer.
The funds are not directly invested in by retail investors but are used by superannuation funds, including KiwiSaver funds, trusts and charities to invest large sums of money.
The worst performer was the ING New Zealand Equity fund which was down 9 per cent in the three months ending June 30.
The NZX-50 benchmark index dropped 7.7 per cent during the period.
Closely following ING was the Alliance Australasian High Growth fund which was down 8.1 per cent and AMP Capital Investors Strategic Equity fund which dropped 4.6 per cent.
But not all were in the red. Brook Asset Management's Alpha fund managed to return 8.7 per cent beating Brook's Tasman Wholesale fund which returned 4.4 per cent to investors.
Milford Asset Management's Aggressive fund, Mint Asset Management's wholesale portfolio and Tyndall Investment Management's Small Companies fund also had positive returns.
Mercer head of investments Martin Lewington said there were a variety of reasons why some funds had done better than others.
Some were likely to have held a high level of cash, enabling them to avoid the worst of the sharemarket downturn while the performance of others depended on how much of the portfolio was invested in Australian shares and the balance between small, medium and large company investments.
But one key trend which came through in the survey was that those who had performed well in good times continued to be the top performers in the tougher times.
Over the past year the median return for the funds was -19.1 per cent compared to the NZX 50 index which was down 23.1 per cent.
Lewington said it was not often the market dropped by nearly 25 per cent. But he said it had followed five great years.
