Funds That Perform: L&G Global Health and Pharmaceutical Index

Pfizer World HQ New York City

The past few years have been anything but easy for equities investors and the performance of funds in 2011 hardly inspired confidence.  However, as well look into 2012, here is one fund that I’m really keen on, the Global health and pharmaceuticals index fund managed by Joseph Molloy of Legal and General.

Legal and General Global Health and Pharmaceutical Index – Past Performance

OK so the golden rule is that past performance is never an indicator of future potential in investment.  While this may be true, a strong five year record of consistent growth despite difficult market conditions is what attracted me to the fund in the first place.

The fact is over the past five years the fund has delivered an overall yield of 35.45% against the sector average of 5.85% in the same period.  The key successes of the fund may be seen as the avoidance of losses in 2008 and 2011.  Here when the sector suffered a 24.28% loss in 2008 and 9.45% loss in 2011, L&G’s fund managed to grow by 7.67% and 9.15% respectively.

L&G Global Health and Pharmaceutical Index Fund Trust: Charges and Tax

A further feature which attracts me to the fund is the relatively low level charges, here costs include a 1% annual management charge and a 0.15% additional extras charge.  However, there are no initial charges, exit fees or performance management fees levied on the fund.  This is a good cost structure compared to some of L&G’s other funds which carry an 5% initial change and much higher annual management charges.

In addition, the fund can also be held in an ISA so the tax man will not be eating away at capital gains or dividend payments thus making the fund all the more attractive for those who still have some of their ISA allowance to use up.

Global Health and Pharmaceutical Fund Holdings

The fund is a good way to gain an explore to a wide number of large scale corporate in the health and pharmaceuticals sector with the fund holding 135 companies including GSK, Novartis, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson. 

The fund it also quite well diversified from a geographic perspective with holding mainly spread between North America and developed parts of Europe.  The two largest parts of the fund are invested in the US (56.91%) and in Switzerland (11.83%).  As such, it may be seen that the fund offers a level of diversification without investing too much in politically unstable regions.

So whatever the world holds for funds and equities this year, I’m hoping a strong record over the past five years will see the L&G Global Health and Pharmaceutical Fund deliver some real results for me in 2012.