AJ Bell has selected eight funds and trusts for the year ahead, covering a range of underlying asset classes, geographies, and investor risk profiles.
Paul Angell, head of investment research at AJ Bell, outlines AJ Bell’s fund and trust selections for 2026:
Cautious investors:
Personal Assets Trust
“This is a defensively managed multi-asset investment trust where the managers, Sebastian Lyon and Charlotte Yonge, put a high degree of emphasis on capital preservation. The trust is long-only, with concentrated equity holdings and low turnover.
“The managers tend to invest in traditional asset classes (equities, government bonds and gold), and are reactive to market opportunities with their weightings to these core asset classes. Within their equity holding they look for higher quality, cash generative businesses. Despite being invested in major, liquid asset classes, the trust still takes on market risk, and there is therefore no guarantee the trust will protect capital over any period. That said, the trust’s long-term performance has been good, delivering a solid return profile with significantly less volatility than wider markets.
“Personal Assets Trust’s 2025 returns were particularly strong, delivering 10.4% over the year, with the trust’s gold positioning particularly beneficial to returns.
“At the time of writing, the trust remains conservatively positioned, with 44% of assets held in government bonds (US, UK and Japanese), mostly inflation linked, 12% in gold bullion and 41% in equities. The trust is not typically geared, and a discount control mechanism (DCM) is in place. This DCM keeps the trust’s share price trading close to its NAV.
“The trust typically plays a defensive role in portfolios, holding up when riskier assets, such as equities and credit, sell off. This has been the case through numerous market pullbacks including the financial crisis, the outset of the Covid pandemic and the rising interest rate environment of 2022. For those investors who prefer an open-ended fund structure, the Trojan Fund is managed by the same team and with the same philosophy and approach as the Personal Assets Trust.”
TwentyFour Corporate Bond
“TwentyFour Corporate Bond is a risk aware sterling corporate bond fund, managed by Chris Bowie and the team at TwentyFour Asset Management – a specialist fixed income boutique with a large team of investment professionals specialising across multi-sector bonds, investment grade bonds and asset backed securities. The business has impressive expertise across these core capabilities.
“The managers of this fund target superior risk adjusted returns versus peers, and the fund is therefore often cautiously positioned within its peer group. Whilst the shape of the portfolio in recent years has tended to include an underweight to interest rate risk, offset by an overweight to credit risk, the fund has actually been underweight both interest rate and credit risk more recently, given the managers’ caution around the tight level of credit spreads.
“Investment grade credit spreads remain tight, so the bulk of the fund’s c.5.5% yield continues to come from the relatively high risk-free rate in the UK. Providing no major pullbacks in credit spreads, the fund should be able to deliver its c.5.5% yield over the coming 12 months, with potential for additional capital returns should interest rate expectations in the UK fall.”
Balanced investors:
Polar Capital Global Insurance
“The return profile of this equity fund is less correlated than most to global equity markets. This is thanks to the revenue profile of the invested businesses being predominantly tied to insurance underwriting premiums/margins which are not typically reliant on prevailing economic conditions and are often tied to regulatory requirements.
“Alongside the margins made within their insurance books, these insurance companies generate returns through their investment portfolios, which are predominantly invested in short-dated bonds. Should yields rise, the yields on these short-dated bonds would also rise accordingly, further benefitting the return profile of these companies.
“Following a very strong 2024 when the fund returned 26.7%, returns underwhelmed through 2025 at 2.9%, with the weak US dollar proving a headwind to their US domiciled stocks alongside some company level losses attributable to the Q1 Californian wildfires and the negative sentiment arising from this. The insurance industry continues to enjoy structural tailwinds however, thanks to rising risk complexity across society (e.g. cyber risk), which in turn bodes well for future returns, and 2026 could represent a good entry point for the sector given the underperformance of 2025.
“We believe the fund benefits from many of the elements that make for a great specialist fund – a genuine niche in market exposure (non-life insurance businesses), an experienced and specialised team in Nick Martin and Dominic Evans, and the corporate backing of a committed parent in Polar Capital.”
M&G Japan
“The M&G Japan fund benefits from an experienced manager in Carl Vine, whose in-depth research approach permeates the strong analyst team assessing Japanese equities at M&G. Vine and the team have curated a universe of companies that have undergone what they term a ‘360-degree evaluation’, with a focus on company, as well as financial analysis. Some of the key factors the team look to understand are how a company generates profits, the sustainability of revenues, and what might impact returns in the future.
“The fund’s manager considers risk management to be equally as important as stock selection. As such, he looks to mitigate against excessive sector over/underweights, with individual stocks additionally assessed based on their correlation with each other. The resulting portfolio is a concentrated portfolio of 40 to 60 stocks that can be invested across the market capitalisation spectrum. The team aren’t wedded to a particular investment style, though we expect the portfolio to be fairly core with a value tilt.
“2025 was another very good year for the fund, up c.22% versus c.15% for the sector, backing up outperformance in each of the previous four calendar years.
“Overall, we believe the fund offers investors access to a strong analyst team who view companies from a differentiated perspective, led by an experienced and considered investor in Carl Vine. The balanced approach to portfolio construction should ensure that stock selection is the main driver of returns and limit some of the volatility historically seen when investing in a particular style in Japan. The fund is also keenly priced which helps it stand out further within its peer group.”
Adventurous investors:
Polar Capital Global Technology
“This specialist technology strategy, boasting one of the largest technology research teams in the market, makes a great fund for AI bulls. The team look to unearth the next generation of technology leaders by identifying the technology industry’s core themes and inflection points alongside deep, fundamental and bottom-up stock analysis and selection. The resulting portfolio is typically invested across 60 to 70 names.
“The fund had a remarkable 2025, up over 40% versus just c.16% for the index/sector. Yet the managers remain positive on the sector’s outlook from here, believing a vast amount of the economy is still to be disrupted by further innovations in AI, particularly software businesses and service level jobs more generally.
“A c.9% weighting to semiconductor chip designer Nvidia is the largest holding in the fund, whilst two more semiconductor chip designers, Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices, and major chip manufacturer TSMC make up the rest of the fund’s largest holdings. From a valuation perspective the fund’s price/earnings ratio stood at 28 times and 5.7 times for price/sales (as at 30 November 2025).”
Schroder Global Equity Income
“This deep value, global equity fund’s team are thoroughly committed to a disciplined accounting-based investment process where they scour the cheapest 20% of global stocks. The team look to avoid value traps, with every stock idea undergoing independent modelling by a second member of the team before being allocated to.
“2025 was an excellent year for the fund, up 18.5% versus 13.5% and 12.6% for the index and sector respectively, with stock selection across financials (including SocGen and Standard Chartered), consumer discretionary and energy sectors all contributing positively to returns. The fund’s longer-term returns versus both its Global Equity Income sector and an MSCI World Global Value index are also very credible. That said, the fund’s returns can be very different to wider markets given the smaller pool of stocks investable.
“Just 32% of the fund is invested in the US, with large regional overweights to the UK, Japan and Europe. Traditionally more defensive healthcare companies such as GSK and Pfizer sit in the fund’s top 10, alongside Standard Chartered (UK bank), Repsol (Spanish energy business) and Vodafone (communication services). The fund sits on a price/earnings multiple of just 10.1 times and 0.55 times price/sales (as at 31 December 2025).”
Income seekers:
Aegon High Yield
“This global high yield bond fund is paying out a c.8.5% yield, delivered alongside a low level of duration thanks to high yield bonds being typically shorter maturity than their investment grade counterparts.
“The managers of this fund, Thomas Hanson and Mark Benbow, are entirely index agnostic in their management of the strategy, believing a passive allocation to high yield bonds is nonsensical given indices are weighted to the most indebted businesses. Given this index agnostic approach, Aegon’s global team of credit analysts are crucial to the success of the fund, generating the individual bond ideas that populate the portfolio.
“It is also actively managed from a top-down perspective, with the co-managers assessing the fundamentals, valuation, technicals and sentiment of the market. The extent to which they have a positive outlook across these factors then determines the fund’s target beta (0.8 to 1.2).
“The co-managers have been on the fund together since November 2019, during which time they have successfully navigated both up and down markets, including the Covid pandemic and rising interest rates, delivering top quartile returns within their peer group. 2025 was no exception with the fund delivering 10.9%, comfortably outstripping the sector’s 7.4%.”
Man Income
“The Man Income fund’s pragmatic and analytical managers Henry Dixon and Jack Barrat invest in undervalued UK companies across the market cap spectrum which are paying a yield at least in line with the market. In order to avoid value traps the managers also look at a firm’s cash flow and assets.
“The team seek out undervalued and unloved companies, where the UK market continues to present opportunities. Their investment process centres on identifying two types of stocks: those trading below their replacement cost (what it would cost today to replace a company’s assets and operations) that are also cash generative, and those where the market appears to be undervaluing profit streams.
“Over 2025 the fund was up c.28%, comfortably ahead of the c.18.5% delivered by the IA UK Equity Income sector. Banks were a key contributor over the period, led by Lloyds but with strong contributions also coming from Barclays and Standard Chartered.
“The fund remains cheaper than the market on a price/earnings ratio of around 10 times, with a distribution yield of 4.4%. The financial services sector remains an overweight at c.30% of the fund, with basic materials, consumer discretionary and real estate making up the fund’s other largest sector weights.”
