The Lemon Fool

It seems impossible to know what the entire portfolio holdings of, say, MYI and HFEL are. I can only find the usual top 10 holdings for each. Can anyone enlighten me on this? I emailed both IT's but got only acknowledgements.

You could argue that I don't know what I bought.

Given that neither are open ended trusts, a Woodford trading freeze seems highly unlikely. That doesn't mean that neither are holding illiquid stocks or bonds. HFEL In particular is of interest as it maintains a very high yield and could be tempted to go for dodgier high dividend payers.

I am sure I am (slightly) worrying unnecessarily so comments are most welcome.

TP2.

MYI lists their full holdings as of 31 December 2018 on p22 to p26 of their annual report

Pendrainllwyn

I can find the top 50 holdings in their annual report on the Janus Henderson website (seems like they held 53 investments at the time of the final report). The interim report from February has a similar list of holdings, but the number of holdings are down to 49. Can't see a more up to date list than the semi annual reports.


edit: I looked for info on HFEL as its an IT I'm interested in buying.

And HFEL does likewise on p10 to p11 of their annual report as of 31 August 2018.

And both disclose their full holdings in their semi-annual reports too. All these documents are available on their websites. That frequency of disclosure doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Pendrainllwyn

TahiPanasDua wrote:It seems impossible to know what the entire portfolio holdings of, say, MYI and HFEL are. I can only find the usual top 10 holdings for each. Can anyone enlighten me on this? I emailed both IT's but got only acknowledgements.

Your best bet is to check the annual report for each trust. Annual reports ALWAYS have more information than factsheets and third party websites. The problem is that they are a snapshot at a particular date - if you really want more detail look at the half-year report and the factsheets.

Henderson Far East Income's 2017-18 annual report. Pages 10 & 11 show all 50 shareholdings plus 3 put options. Breakdown by sector and country is on page 12. My quick summary: 25% China, 17% Australia, 15% Taiwan, 12% South Korea. FInancials 28%, Telecoms 14%, Technology 11%

https://www.janushenderson.com/ukpi/fun ... me-limited

Murray International's 2018 annual report. Pages 22 to 27 show the portfolio plus the breakdown by sector and country. My quick summary: 82% Equities, 16% Fixed Interest. Asia ex Japan 30%. USA 16%. South America 24%.

https://www.murray-intl.co.uk/en/literature-library

I own shares in both trusts and have done so for many years.

Realistically there's no chance of a Woodford-style trading freeze. For that to happen stockmarkets would have to shut. Investment Trust managers are never forced to sell their shareholdings because investors want to sell; the investors sell their shares in the market without the managers getting involved.

You can get a pretty good idea by entering holdings into the Morning Star X ray tool...

http://tools.morningstar.co.uk/uk/xray/ ... dings.aspx

Always the chance of errors, of course, but a good approximation.

Thanks everybody!
You can depend on TMF to come up with the goods!

I'll look up the reports. I probably couldn't tell anyway if anything is actually junk

TP2.

Liquidity of holdings is not a huge issue in investment trusts and shouldn't stop them trading .Woodford's patient capital trust is still trading despite having far less liquid investments than the open ended fund.
What illiquid and unquoted investments can do is make the NAV a little more debatable, and trusts with high levels of illiquid and unquoted assets more frequently trade at a discount. (which may represent a buying opportunity)

For convenience/quick access I usually go through the HL website, for the relevant trust, and then click on either the fact sheet or the Latest Report & Accounts options, (lower down on the right hand side of the HL page).

For example:
https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/shares-sear ... td-ord-npv

TahiPanasDua wrote:Thanks everybody!
You can depend on TMF to come up with the goods!
TP2.

TMF??!!
Cough, splutter! Wash your mouth out with soap and water!
TLF. Or LF.

--kiloran

kiloran wrote:

TahiPanasDua wrote:Thanks everybody!
You can depend on TMF to come up with the goods!
TP2.

TMF??!!
Cough, splutter! Wash your mouth out with soap and water!
TLF. Or LF.

--kiloran

Woops! I'm such a slow learner. Must get used to this new-fangled Lemon stuff!

I do not understand why people seem to rely on third party websites such as Morningstar or HL. Go to the original numbers in the Annual Reports or Half yearly reports and if necessary to the monthly factsheets. Very straightforward really.

Liquidity is not an issue with investment trusts, at least it does not depend on the make up of the portfolio. If it is a very small trust or it has a high private shareholding its shares might not be as liquid as some others but there is no question of liquidity as in the case of any OEIC or other open ended fund. It is not the assets that are being sold to provide the liquidity, it is simply the shares of the IT itself.

Dod

TahiPanasDua wrote:It seems impossible to know what the entire portfolio holdings of, say, MYI and HFEL are. I can only find the usual top 10 holdings for each. Can anyone enlighten me on this? I emailed both IT's but got only acknowledgements.

You could argue that I don't know what I bought.

Given that neither are open ended trusts, a Woodford trading freeze seems highly unlikely. That doesn't mean that neither are holding illiquid stocks or bonds. HFEL In particular is of interest as it maintains a very high yield and could be tempted to go for dodgier high dividend payers.

I am sure I am (slightly) worrying unnecessarily so comments are most welcome.

TP2.

I find the AIC website to be a handy way in to information on investment trusts.

You get an up to date overview of the IT (discount, cover, revenue reserves etc) and, in direct answer to your question, there are also links to the most recent factsheet (with just the top 10 holdings) and the most recent annual and half yearly reports - both of which give the full holdings.

https://www.theaic.co.uk/

Dod101 wrote:I do not understand why people seem to rely on third party websites such as Morningstar or HL. Go to the original numbers in the Annual Reports or Half yearly reports and if necessary to the monthly factsheets. Very straightforward really.

That's easy. Third-party sites aggregate a lot of information to give a quicker overview than going to original sources. Not to mention side-by-side comparisons of different ITs.

It's like the difference between reading a history book and the painstaking work the author did in researching original sources.

How good a job they do is another question. Just as with the author of that history book. Or the management of that company.

77ss wrote:I find the AIC website to be a handy way in to information on investment trusts.

Agreed. Probably the single most useful site out there for researching managed investments.

UncleEbenezer wrote:Third-party sites aggregate a lot of information to give a quicker overview than going to original sources. Not to mention side-by-side comparisons of different ITs.

It's like the difference between reading a history book and the painstaking work the author did in researching original sources.

How good a job they do is another question. Just as with the author of that history book.

The AIC data is supplied by Morningstar, it's not always accurate, best to verify before using the data as the basis for decisions. For example, after the recent North America Income IT (NAIT) share split, the AIC site showed NAIT having a 15% yield (if only!).

A complete list of Murray International's portfolio holdings in Excel format can be found on the 'Literature Library' page of the trust site, scroll down the page and click on 'Portfolio Holding Summary'.
https://www.murray-intl.co.uk/en/literature-library

Aberdeen Standard appear to update this within a couple of weeks of the turn of each month. So as of today 22nd June 2019 you can download the holdings as at 31st May 2019. It's possible to save the file in an editable format and rejig how it appears to make it more comprehensible than the slightly awkward format (e.g. the holdings are listed in alphabetical not size order) in which it is published. I hope this is helpful.