Armchair Critic: Should we pitch IFAs head-to-head on portfolio performance?

If we look for a new car, we buy What Car? magazine, not What Gearbox? or What Turning Circle? In other words, we care about the whole, not its components. In investment terms, the whole is the portfolio, the components are the funds. Yet this sector spends £1 on fund measurement for every penny it spends on portfolio measurement and comparison. The back pages of many finance papers are, even in this digital age, packed with fund prices. Fund data is necessary; it’s just not sufficient. Now the world has changed – funds are a means to an end and that end is a nicely diversified, mu...