Advisers tell Professional Adviser about their most triumphant fund picks...

Danny Cox, Hargreaves Lansdown

Invesco Perpetual High Income fund

"I recommended this to a widow in her 50s from the proceeds of a maturing fixed term equity bond in 1997. Originally invested via a PEP now an ISA, the plan was to reinvest the dividend income and draw it later when she retired.

Although she has now retired the income is still being reinvested. From the original £6,000 invested, her holding is now worth more than £24,000. The average annual return of the fund has been over 9% since she first invested, despite three huge market falls and the FTSE 100 still lower than it was 11 years ago.

Equity income remains a firm favourite of mine and features as a core portfolio holding. It works on the best principles of investing: choose well run, profitable companies which pay dividends. The power of these dividends when reinvested should not be underestimated. By contrast, a FTSE tracker over the same period would have produced less than 50% of the same return.

UK Equity Income in general has underperformed in recent years however managers in this sector are positive about the future and the fundamentals of income investing are sound.

While Neil Woodford's funds have made positive returns over the last couple of years, his aversion to mining and energy stocks has weighed on performance - being an income fund manager there are few mining stocks he can buy as they tend to yield very little - plus he believes the sector as a whole is overvalued and therefore his funds have lagged others in the sector.

I wouldn't write him off though. He remains as passionate as ever and I share his confidence that he will see investors through the potentially challenging times ahead.

He sees better prospects in more defensive tobacco and food retail stocks, but his real enthusiasm is towards pharmaceuticals and two of his largest holdings are GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca with attractive valuations plus spending on healthcare set to rise due to aging populations globally, the pharmaceuticals sector looks appealing.

I have also held this fund personally for about 10 years and don't have any plans to change."

Duncan Philp, Macbeth Currie

M&G Recovery fund

"I have this fund in all of my portfolios as a core holding, I also recommend this fund for parents/grandparents investing for children/grandchildren of a young age where I am looking for long term consistent performance.

This fund was launched in May 1969 and over this period each of the managers have looked to invest in undervalued companies where they feel there is a good prospect of recovery and growth within these companies.

The fund has consistently outperformed the FTSE All-Share index in 30 of the 42 years it has been running. Indeed it has returned 48.8% over the last 5 years compared to the All-share index of 23.2% and over the last 10 years has returned a credible 106.3% compared to 50.7% in the All-Share index.

Banks and the like tend to recommend tracker funds for long term children's investment but this fund has in many ways outperformed any tracking of the All-Share.

This fund has certainly been one of the most consistent funds out there and I continue to use it to this day."

Jaskarn Pawar, Investor Profile

Dimensional Global Short Dated Bond fund

"The best fund I've ever recommended is the Dimensional Global Short Dated Bond fund. Not for any specific client as such, as I generally recommend it for most clients. It simply does what it says it will.

Too much of the investment industry is based on a promise. Too many funds are sold on the promise of returns, which may or may not materialise, but the fund manager gets paid anyway, for trying.

The Dimensional fund is low cost, simple to explain and forms the foundation of many of my clients' portfolios.

Short dated bond funds are, by their very nature, less volatile and lower risk than longer dated bond funds.

The Dimensional fund for example has a weighted average term to maturity of 4.14 years for the stocks it holds, and they have an average quality of AA+.

Bonds with less than five years to maturity tend to be far less volatile as their price tends to settle towards the par value/redemption price. The Dimensional fund is particularly attractive as it achieves all of this with a fund TER of 0.35%."

Kevin Tooze, Equity Partners UK

Invesco Perpetual High Income fund

 "One of the best funds I have ever recommended is the Invesco Perpetual High Income Fund . Managed for many years by the individual Neil Woodford it has an outstanding annualized growth rate of 9.1% pa over the last decade.

The manager has not always conformed with the general consensus or most Equity Income managers and indeed shunned Technology stocks in their hey day and has regularly sung the praises of unpopular stocks such as Tobacco companies.

With a current yield of 4.4% the fund has the ability to be a good income provider or growth investment when reinvested. This fund must be one of the most popular selections for those first venturing into collective funds and equity based ISAs for the first time.

Although this fund may appear to be underperforming if we take a snapshot today Neil Woodford's long term record speaks for itself and I trust his conviction now as I did when we were in the midst of the tech boom or the desperate days of 2007/8 when his peers in most cases suffered far greater losses."