According to the Financial Times article published today 24^th April, “Income seeking investors face an uphill struggle”, just 25% of equity income fund managers in the UK outperformed the FTSE All Share Index since the start of the year (source: returns data from Interactive Investor).

This would mean the top quartile suffered a loss lower than a 25,2% decline in sterling terms.

My fund would be in top quartile in the UK since in sterling terms, the decline as of 3^rd April was 23,26% and as of 23^rd April was 19,3%.

I clearly do not take any satisfaction from this as the standard that I set is to be amongst the best.

Still a brilliant performance would be to see a temporary decline of 10% to 15% which due to a strong cash holding; would mean the strong possibility of a full recovery and growth over the next several years.

It would be impossible for an equity fund not to show some sort of decline given the largest global economic contraction since the second world war.

While I have a strong personal cash holding with no requirement for draw downs so that element is well managed; my performance to date could have been better from my perspective since while it is better than the average fund manager, it is not brilliant.