Discretionaries deliver best monthly return since October 2011

January’s equity rally has seen private client portfolios surge ahead in to the New Year, initial estimates from Asset Risk Consultants (ARC) show.

According to the latest private client indices (PCI) estimates, Balanced Asset, Steady Growth and Equity Risk portfolios have all achieved their best performance since October 2011, following fairly limp returns for the last five months of 2012.

The strong start to the year – which saw the FTSE 100 power past 6,000 to an 18-month high -  has meant that three categories of portfolio, Sterling Balanced, Steady Growth and Equity Risk have made around half last year’s total returns in January alone.

Making the most of the rally were the Sterling Equity Risk portfolios, which posted a return of 5.7%.

This was streets ahead of figures posted during the second half of last year, which came in between a week 0.28% and 1.32%.

The more conservative Sterling Cautious portfolios missed much of the rally and made a more sober return of 1.4%. This was still far better than the last six months of 2012 when Cautious portfolios returned less than 1%, on top of the three months of negative returns posted last spring.

Meanwhile Sterling Balanced Asset PCI’s came in at 3.1% for January, while the Sterling Steady Growth category made 4.3% in January.