Biggest fund winners and losers of 2025

There are years in which it almost seems difficult not to make big gains from investing, and 2025 has been one of those.

Equity markets shrugged off initial concerns about tariffs back in April and went on to post huge gains: shares in Europe, the emerging markets and the UK have risen spectacularly, while the S&P 500 (and the US-heavy MSCI World index) have also done well even after a spell of weakness for the US dollar.

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Funds have done well to join in on the party. If we look at the open-ended fund sectors monitored by the Investment Association (IA), which also includes some exchange-traded funds, just one group out of more than 50 (India/Indian Subcontinent) posted an average loss in sterling terms for 2025.

The figures show that, as at 17 December, more than 20 sectors had delivered an average total return of more than 10% in 2025.

As the table shows, we have seen funds focused on Latin America, commodities, Europe, and China doing especially well. Just outside the top five is emerging markets, in which the average fund has returned 19.3%.

Source: FE Analytics. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

If we look at the best-performing funds on an individual basis, some of these trends are apparent. But it’s worth noting that the top names are pretty niche – and that these satellite funds might not want to occupy too big a space in your portfolio.

The gold rush

Gold and silver prices have rocketed this year, with the former benefiting partly from heightened geopolitical uncertainty and the bearish sentiment that comes with it.

And with both precious metal prices and equity markets on the rise, mining equities have delivered huge returns.

Source: FE Analytics. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

This trend, and a wider boom for all sorts of commodities, becomes obvious from a glance at the best-performing funds this year.

Every single name bar one (a European banks ETF) focuses on companies in the commodities space, and the vast majority of these focus largely on gold. Interestingly, WS Amati Strategic Metals  also makes the cut, with less in the yellow metal than others in the top 10, holding 40%.

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SVS Baker Steel Gold&Precious Mtls B Acc, which tops the table with a total return of almost 172%, had a 67% allocation to the gold sector at the end of October, with around a fifth of the portfolio in silver.

To its credit, the fund looks relatively well diversified: its biggest three positions each make up a not outrageous 5% of assets, while the fund does have a spread of allocations to different parts of the world, from Latin America to North America and Africa.

But we should remember that a mining equities fund should generally make up a small part of your portfolio, given its niche status. Investors who have enjoyed such big gains from these funds may do well to take some profits and rebalance back to a lower allocation.

This is especially important given how volatile the likes of mining equities can be. The returns of the Baker Steel fund do illustrate this: it made big gains in 2024 but managed, for example, to lose around 17% in 2021.

Which funds struggled?

The sheer strength of markets means that investment losses have been fairly rare, and fairly limited, in 2025. But a few markets have struggled nevertheless.

As the table shows, funds focused on the Indian equity market have had a rough year, with the IA India/Indian Subcontinent sector posting an average loss of more than 10% in sterling terms.

That reflects a pivot in how different emerging markets have performed. Chinese equities, which have struggled since 2021, roared back to life this year, in part because of more business-friendly noises from the authorities. India, meanwhile, has struggled.

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This comes after a few years of strong performance, and partly reflects the fact that Indian equities have been viewed as expensive in recent history. While the market is still seen as having huge potential, in part because of its strong demographics, lofty valuations have had a long way to fall.

Source: FE Analytics. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

Looking at individual funds, we’ve seen Invesco India Equity lose 19%, with Liontrust India C Acc GBP losing 18.1%.

Looking at some other individual strugglers, it’s notable that property funds have had a rough time: M&G Property Portfolio GBP D Inc, once a giant in its subsector, has lost around 25%.

It’s also worth noting that certain bond funds have had a pretty lacklustre showing. Several US-dollar denominated bond funds are among the worst performers, which partly reflects the weakness of the dollar versus sterling earlier this year.

Meanwhile, UK inflation-linked gilts, which should benefit as inflation expectations rise, have had a pretty flat performance for the year.