Funds beating global markets in good times and bad

2025 has been a rewarding year for investors, and one that can be split into two distinct phases.

Global investors had, to put it delicately, a difficult first few months of the year, with the emergence of China’s DeepSeek AI model sending a tremor through the US tech space and President Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ pronouncements later sending shares plummeting around the world.

If that gave some vindication to bearish investors, it was incredibly short-lived.

Markets recovered strongly from the initial tariff drama in early April and posted huge gains, with strong returns becoming a theme for 2025.

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The MSCI World and S&P 500 index both posted solid returns despite issues with a weakening dollar, while regions such as Europe and the emerging markets had an especially strong performance for the year as a whole.

As such, funds had a pretty easy ride in terms of delivering some sort of positive return. But it’s worth asking which portfolios managed to beat the market both when it faltered and when it raced ahead.

Good things from tough beginnings

The first real challenge for global markets came on 20 January, when DeepSeek released its new model, seen as a competitor to the likes of ChatGPT.

The pain continued up until shortly after Trump’s Liberation Day speech in early April, and the MSCI World index managed to lose around 8% in sterling terms from 20 January to 2 April.

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Plenty of global equity funds managed to do better than this over that period, from quality portfolios such as Brown Advisory Global Leaders B GBP Acc to value plays such as the increasingly popular Ranmore Global Equity.

But managing to outperform both in this phase and as markets recovered (with the MSCI World returning around 18% from 2 April to 31 December) is a bigger ask.

Better in bad times and good

Quality portfolios such as the Brown Advisory fund, or IFSL Evenlode Global Equity B GBP Acc, struggled to keep up with the post-Liberation Day rally, having done well versus the market in the first quarter of 2025. But a good number of funds, predominantly focused either on value investing or generating income, outperformed both when the market was struggling and recovering.

Ranmore Global Equity, which has latched on to especially powerful market rallies in areas such as South Korea, continued to outpace the MSCI World index as it rallied and ultimately returned around 30% in 2025 as a whole.

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

That fund is joined on this front by other value funds such as Ninety One Global Special Sits I Acc and Jupiter Global Value Equity Instl Acc, as well as RGI Global Recovery B Inc. All these names have returned at least 20% for 2025, as the table shows.

If names like Ranmore have had a strong showing, their returns are dwarfed by the roughly 45% return that Artemis Global Income I Acc generated this year.

The fund, which like some of its stablemates has a big financials allocation, as well as a good chunk of exposure to European shares, made a modest positive return in the first quarter of the year and then enjoyed huge gains in the wake of Liberation Day.

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The Artemis fund is joined by Murray International Ord (LSE:MYI), a trust known for spreading its exposure beyond the US, which again did well when markets were down and then back up.

Elsewhere, it’s worth noting that passive funds which take a less US-centric approach to global investing than the MSCI World index have benefited from that approach this year. Vanguard LifeStrategy 100% Equity A Acc, known for its penchant for UK shares, beat the MSCI World index both in the early months of 2025 and in the rally that kicked off from early April.

Meanwhile, one name from an especially successful franchise, Artemis SmartGARP Glb Eq I Acc GBP, struggled from 20 January to 2 April but had less of a loss than the MSCI World index. The fund appeared to make up for that from early April onwards, posting huge gains and ultimately returning around 32% for 2025.