For those of you who’ve received your copy of Citywire Selection with your weekly instalment of Citywire Wealth Manager and New Model Adviser, you will know we are delighted to embark on our second year.

The statistics so far – in choppy conditions – have been impressive with 70% of our actively managed picks beating their Citywire benchmark in 2010, ahead of the 55% figure for whole of the fund manager universe we track. On top of that, 65% of our choices beat their peer groups.

While this is good, we are certainly not getting ahead of ourselves, but it goes some way to vindicate why we first decided to build Citywire Selection. To condense an overwhelming array of investment choices into a more managable 140 (...136 to be precise).

There have been some real home runs with all of our commodities picks bettering sharply rallying markets, and 80% of funds outperforming in Asia and global emerging markets. The same is true of our picks in core sectors UK Equities, Income and Managed.

We are not resting on our laurels and have keenly followed two good investment maxims; first, have faith in your choices even if they occasionally get buffeted off course; and second, be decisive when events dictate you need to change.

The second point was illustrated when we were forced to reassess our Gartmore choices in October, following the departure of star manager Roger Guy. Thankfully that tale has reached its conclusion.

We will reassess those managers who have made the transition to Henderson once they have bedded in.

Otherwise, it is business as usual: to help you and your clients sort out the wheat from the massed fields of investment chaff.

We look forward to our next formal review in six months time, and we’ll leave you with the main changes and our top 20 star picks.

In the meantime be sure to monitor our ongoing e-mail updates and regular musings on twitter @CWSelection, or simply visit the Citywire Selection home page.

What's changed over the last six months?

As part of our update we added the Schroder US Smaller Companies fund. But as we went to press the fund was hard closed and is now accepting no new business. This will now be removed from our list

A further development has also taken place, with a manager change on the Newton Income fund, a Citywire Selection pick. Chris Metcalfe is being replaced by Richard Wilmot and we are currently assessing the situation.