Investors building out their portfolio often turn to equities for long-term growth but like to ensure a buffer is in place – in the form of fixed income or alternatives – to prop up portfolio performance when markets fall.
Vanguard LifeStrategy 80% Equity is one such high-equity core option. As the name suggests, the £17.5bn fund holds around 80% in equities and 20% in bonds.
Since the LifeStrategy suite was launched in 2011, the 80% fund has proven a popular and consistent outperformer. It has been in the first or second quartile for returns in the IA Mixed Investment 40-85% Shares sector every year between 2016 to 2025 and over the full 10 years delivered a 154.7% return.
Below, fund selectors highlighted four strategies they believe work alongside Vanguard LifeStrategy 80% Equity.
First up, Darius McDermott, managing director at Chelsea Financial Services, pointed to JOHCM Global Opportunities, noting it is an active global fund “that genuinely earns its keep”.
“Right now, quality-growth is an interesting place to look,” McDermott said. “The sell-off of recent years has been indiscriminate – good and bad businesses have been marked down together, creating real opportunity for a selective investor.”
The £816.9m JO Hambro Capital Management strategy is co-managed by FE fundinfo Alpha Managers Ben Leyland and Robert Lancastle and aims to generate long-term capital and income growth through active management of a 40-stock portfolio of global listed equities.
“JOHCM Global Opportunities is built around a simple philosophy: heads we win, tails we don’t lose too much,” said McDermott.
“They screen out weak franchises and over-leveraged balance sheets before focusing on businesses with durable competitive advantages and strong returns on capital.”
It has also been recently suggested that the fund would complement broad global tracker funds.
In addition, McDermott noted the fund’s “meaningful underweight” to the US “adds genuine diversification away from the index-heavy exposure already embedded in the LifeStrategy fund”.
Performance of the fund vs sector over 10yrs
Source: FE Analytics
Meanwhile, Sheridan Admans, founder and chief investment strategist at Infundly, suggested the $513.7m Thornburg Equity Income Builder fund, which is co-managed by Brian McMahon, Matt Burdett and Christian Hoffmann.
“It adds a more income-aware, valuation disciplined equity profile alongside the Vanguard fund,” he said.
“It can balance broad market capitalisation exposure by focusing on resilient, cash-generative companies where dividend durability, balance sheet strength and sensible valuations matter more than benchmark weight or market momentum.”
The managers utilise a disciplined, bottom-up research process to identify companies with the ability and willingness to pay and grow their dividends while maintaining financial stability. The portfolio currently includes around 60 holdings with a median market capitalisation of $64.1bn, including AT&T, Samsung Electronics and TSMC.
Admans said the fund’s appeal is that it is not chasing the highest yields but instead looks to ensure consistency, “with clear accountability” from its managers. The strategy’s assets have grown from just under $100m in March 2025 to over $500m around a year later.
Performance-wise, it has a strong recent track record, with the fund up 27.5% – more than double the 12.8% sector average.
It has posted a first-quartile return every year since 2022 and over the past three years has topped the sector across multiple metrics, including a top-decile three-year return of 64.7%.
Performance of the fund vs sector over 3yrs
Source: FE Analytics
Returns are not guaranteed, however, and Thornburg Equity Income Builder did struggle in 2019 and 2020, slipping into the fourth quartile of the IA Global Equity Income sector.
Elsewhere, Paul Angell, head of investment research at AJ Bell, picked Schroder Global Equity Income for its value characteristics and downside protection, which he argued would ensure more stability alongside Vanguard LifeStrategy 80% Equity during market pullbacks.
The fund’s management team includes Simon Adler, who was named head of value equities at Schroders in July 2025 following the departure of Nick Kirrage. They apply a disciplined value approach and pick from the cheapest quintile of global stocks.
“With its focus on undervalued equities, it should offer more stability, given value funds have lower to fall on a valuation basis than the wider equity market,” Angell said.
As of 31 March 2026, the fund had a 10.5x price-to-earnings multiple versus 15.2x for the global equity income sector – a valuation level that Angell said “should provide some protection in a broader market sell-off”.
“Stock selection across financials like SocGen and Standard Chartered, consumer discretionary and energy sectors all contributed positively to recent returns,” he added.
The fund returned 18.5% in 2025 versus 13.5% for the index and 12.6% for the sector and over 10 years to the end of April 2026 has gained 166.9%.
Performance of the fund vs sector over 10yrs
Source: FE Analytics
All of the above selections would make investors’ portfolios riskier by increasing the 80% equity portion of the portfolio. To combat this, Admans also suggested Capital Group Global High Income Opportunities, which would add diversified global credit income alongside the 80% equity portfolio and would bolster the bond portion of the fund.
It aims for a total return primarily driven by high income generation – defined as equal to or in excess of the average yield of funds in the IA Sterling Strategic Bond sector – over five-year periods.
“By combining high yield, emerging market sovereign debt and emerging market corporate bonds, it broadens the fixed income toolkit beyond conventional developed market bonds while still offering a different return source from equities,” Admans said.
He noted that Capital Group’s multi-manager credit structure is “the main attraction”, as it spreads decision-making across specialist sleeves and is supported by a deep global research platform.
“The fund is income-focused but not narrowly dependent on one credit segment, which helps its role as a portfolio diversifier,” he said.
The fund, which is co-managed by David Daigle, Kirstie Spence, Shannon Ward and Luis Freitas de Oliveira, also accounts for the carbon footprint of its investments in corporate issuers, with a few of ensuring the overall portfolio has a lower carbon intensity than the index.
Performance of the fund vs sector over 5yrs
Source: FE Analytics
This is part of an ongoing series, following funds to hold alongside Vanguard LifeStrategy 100% Equity.