Hargreaves Lansdown's Wealth 150 list of tipped funds has been cut to 84 funds, the lowest in the Wealth 150's history.

There are now fewer funds on the list than when it was launched in November 2003. Laith Khalaf, senior analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "There is no shortage of funds available to UK investors, just a shortage of good ones.

"There are gifted managers out there who can deliver consistent outperformance for investors, but they are few and far between.

"Looking forward we expect the market to polarise into the funds of truly talented active managers at one end, and low cost passives at the other. The squeezed middle in between, who cannot compete on either performance or price, is likely to face continued pressure to hold on to their investors."

There have never been fewer funds on the Wealth 150 than there are today. There are currently 84 funds on the Wealth 150 (compared to 142 at launch). This represents around 3.5% of the 2,500 or so funds available to UK investors.

HL says there are a number of reasons for the decline in the number of funds since launch. HL says it has far more quantitative tools available to analyse fund and there is more focus on whether managers have outperformed their sector or not, a focus on manager talent rather than luck.

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HL says there is a limited pool of talented managers in the UK with a sufficiently long track record to satisfy its requirements. Most analysts look at three and five year records while HL's minimum track record is around seven years.

Fund closures have also made life more difficult, says HL, where talented managers have reached capacity and have closed their funds to new investment, meaning they leave the Wealth 150. This is mostly applicable in smaller companies and emerging markets funds. Prominent examples include Aberdeen Emerging Markets and First State Global Emerging Markets.

HL says there are 11 sectors where it has had continuous coverage on the Wealth 150 since it was launched. The funds on the Wealth 150 have outperformed in nine of these 11 sectors, says the company.

The table below shows the combined performance of the Wealth 150 funds in each sector, compared to the sector average.

Figures from Nov 2003 to Oct 2014