Hargreaves Lansdown has removed the Midas Balanced Income Fund from its list of recommended funds.

The financial services firm has downgraded the fund from its Wealth 150 list of favourite funds for new investment as a ‘precautionary measure’.

Meera Patel, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the fund had struggled in 2011, especially ‘during the summer's extreme market volatility triggered by European sovereign debt concerns’.

Patel listed the fund's exposure to the financial sector, the underperformance of its US holdings and the reduction in its exposure to gilts just before gilt prices rose as reasons for its removal from the Wealth 150.

Patel stressed that the long term outlook was still positive. She said, ‘While recent asset allocation decisions have led to the fund's disappointing performance, on a longer term view its flexibility to invest in a number of different assets has proven rewarding.’

The fund has returned a loss of 8.3 per cent over the last six months, underperforming its benchmark, the IMA Cautious Managed sector, which averaged a loss of 2.8 per cent.

Alan Borrows, manager of the Midas Balanced Income Fund, revealed he was disappointed by the removal, but remained defiant about the fund’s position.

He said, ‘Our lack of exposure to safe assets such as gilts has been quite painful to performance, but we still feel gilts offer very little value. There are inflationary risks that those investing in gilts are not taking into account.'

Borrows claimed that the fund’s exposure to financial equities, such as Legal & General and Intermediate Group, was safe due to the solid and well-financed nature of the firms, but admitted its structured product exposure had become a problem.

He said, ‘We’ve taken the decision to significantly reduce our structured product exposure due to concerns over counterparty risks should we get a major financial meltdown.’