Annual returns calendar — which fund led which year

Every figure is a total return published by the fund's own issuer, carried with the document it came from and the date it was stated, and cited beneath the table. Nothing is computed from a price series, so there is no question of which closing prices or which dividend-reinvestment assumption produced it. Selecting a fund adds a cell to each year it has published; funds are matched by ISIN rather than by ticker, because the identifier service returns exchange listing codes that differ from the names people recognise.

Returns published in different currencies sit in the same ranking but are not directly comparable, because a year's currency move is already baked into each figure — a euro-reported and a dollar-reported fund can swap places on the FX rate alone, and the page names the currencies in play for exactly that reason. The figures are gross of any tax you would pay and of whatever your broker charges to hold or trade the fund. A calendar year is an arbitrary window: it says nothing about how far the fund fell inside the year.

Why do some funds have no data?

Because the issuer's published past-performance document has not been transcribed for them yet, and this site will not fill the gap from a market-data feed. Those funds appear in the picker but cannot be selected, which is deliberate: an empty column is honest, whereas a column quietly computed from prices would look identical to a cited one while resting on a different and unstated method.

Does the best fund of last year tend to lead again?

The table is the answer, and it is usually no. Look along any single fund's row and you will find it near the top in some years and near the bottom in others, with the position moving more than the underlying strategy does. That is why a broad fund held through the whole table tends to beat a decision made each January about which column to stand in.

Are these returns before or after costs?

They are the fund's own total return, which is already net of the ongoing charge the fund deducts internally — that is taken out of the fund's assets before the return is struck. What they are not net of is anything that happens outside the fund: your broker's commission, the spread you pay to trade, and whatever your country levies on holding or selling. The total cost of ownership calculator covers that second half.

• Portfolio backtest — what a mix actually returned
• Rolling returns — how much the answer depends on when you started
• ETF cost calculator: every annual cost of holding one fund