Past performance is a good guide to the future if you want to invest in a private equity fund, according to research prepared by McKinsey, the strategy consultants.

An analysis of more than 200 US funds showed that if a firm turned in a top-quartile performance for one fund, then its next fund would be in the top quartile 45% of the time. Even if it was not in the top quartile, it would perform better than the average fund 73% of the time. The pattern is the same all the way across the performance spectrum, with poor performance following poor performance.