So you are fortunate enough to have been the recipient of an unexpected windfall – lucky you. The mortgage payments are ticking along, the kids have all flown the nest and as it stands you can’t think of a more fruitful way to use your money than the investment markets.

But with thousands of funds vying for your attention - finding the right one to make your money work hard will prove challenging. Here we have picked out a couple of options worth looking at to get you started.

You’re feeling adventurous

GVO UK Focus Fund

Manager: Jamie Seaton & Jeff Harris

FE Crown Rating -

FE Alpha Manager Jamie Seaton’s GVO UK Focus fund could be one good option for those looking to get aggressive with their money.

The fund, on the recommended list at FE Trustnet’s Select 100, uses private equity techniques to value UK publicly traded companies. This involves assessing just how much the company would be worth to a private buyer and focusing rigorously on cash flow.

The manager picks stocks that he expects to earn a minimum of 15 per cent compounded over the lifetime of the investment and the fund has substantially outperformed the FTSE under his management.

The fund has returned nearly 280% since Seaton took over the fund in 2009 – versus the average return of around 148% from the IA UK All Companies fund over the same period.

The fund’s concentrated approach – it holds only around 25 stocks at one time – longer than average holding period and a high allocation to mid and small sized businesses have helped the portfolio, and the fund has two large positions in fund managers Aberdeen and Jupiter, which could be beneficiaries of the new pension freedoms.

Investors should be aware that the fund does not invest in banks, miners and oil and gas stocks, which has helped in recent years, but may not always be the case.

The management company of the fund was bought by Lord Rothschild’s RIT Capital Partners at the start of this year, which perhaps goes some way to highlight that the fund has the confidence of a top investor.

You’re playing it safe

Absolute Insight

Manager: Sonia Uys

FE Crown rating -

 Investors have been flocking to absolute return funds for the better part of this year, according to recent figures from the Investment Association, with the Absolute Insight topping the list of most bought from the sector in recent months.

Yes the risk-return profile of this fund will make the more adventurous among us start snoozing,  but this fund is a good place to start for the investor looking for small but regular positive returns, who wants to take on minimal volatility and protect their hard-earned cash – or in this case the windfall.

Sonia Uys’ fund is a fettered fund of funds, holding seven portfolios in total. The manager relies heavily on derivatives in the underlying funds – in a bid to be quicker and cheaper in implementing its market view. Three-quarters of the fund is invested in fixed-income, encompassing covering bonds, emerging market debt and loans.

The fund’s increased specialisation in bonds and currency has in recent months resulted in impressive performance recently. FE data shows the fund has made money in six of the last seven calendar years, only losing money in 2008. It has a max drawdown – which measures how much an investor would have lost if they bought and sold at the worst possible time – of 3.55 per cent since its launch in February 2007. Only one fund has lost less, with the average absolute return fund posting a figure of almost 8 per cent.

It is worth noting that although the fund manages to stick to its mandate to be steady, it does suffer when the markets are flat and there are no movements in prices. The use of derivatives can also be risky so that is worth keeping an eye on.