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Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: September 23rd, 2019, 7:37 pm
by Aminatidi
Well I guess I'll go first then :)

I'm early 40's so arguably accumulating but still keep around 60% in cautious flexible IT's as I've gone from cash in the bank to a six figure sum invested relatively quickly and I don't have the nuts for 100% equities.

For growth I'm around 40% in:

* Lindsell Train Global Equity
* Fundsmith

* Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust
* Scottish American Investment Company (SAINTS)
* Mid Wynd International Investment Trust

I can think of no "better" set of global funds and trusts but always open to suggestions.

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: September 23rd, 2019, 8:05 pm
by Lootman
I do not claim to have a better set of growth funds, and own a couple of those myself. But in the case of Scottish American IT I should point out that its fact sheet indicates that it is an income fund, stating this:

"The Trust aims to be a core investment for private investors seeking income".

https://www.trustnet.com/factsheets/t/f ... ompany-plc

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: September 24th, 2019, 8:49 am
by Wuffle
Anybody at all considering the scale of Fundsmith and LT and the limit of exceptional performance that implies?

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: September 24th, 2019, 9:50 am
by Backache
Wuffle wrote:Anybody at all considering the scale of Fundsmith and LT and the limit of exceptional performance that implies?

I am holding my Fundsmith, but not adding to it, although they are invested in very big companies.
To answer the OP, I would consider adding some smaller companies investment myself there is some evidence that historically they have provided greater long term growth.

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: September 24th, 2019, 3:18 pm
by thebarns
Should global private equity funds/trust have a place in any worldwide growth strategy ?

I think so.

Always a problem knowing exactly which one to pick, but Harbourvest Global Private Equity (HVPE) is frequently mentioned in various forums.

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: September 24th, 2019, 4:35 pm
by Aminatidi
thebarns wrote:Should global private equity funds/trust have a place in any worldwide growth strategy ?

I think so.

Always a problem knowing exactly which one to pick, but Harbourvest Global Private Equity (HVPE) is frequently mentioned in various forums.


I believe around 15% of SMT is in venture capital.

I get that there is a persuasive argument for a much higher allocation.

Ditto smaller companies.

It's always a challenge not end up a collector of Investment Trusts :)

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: September 24th, 2019, 5:37 pm
by thebarns
I know how many shares should you have in a portfolio has been done to death countless times, same applies to a collection of investment trusts/funds.

Buy when one looks at the number of holdings in say, Capital Gearing Trust, often held up as the safest of trusts, I have always been of the view that 10-15 is not enough and would be quite happy with 30-40.

Buying and selling costs are negligible on a decent sized portfolio and ongoing costs should be roughly same whether 10 or 40 shares or trusts.

Sure it will dampen both adverse and outperformance as some great picks offset the duds, but personally I am not looking for outperformance, just decent performance.

I could go for a world tracker like VWRL, but 1) I quite enjoy following and maintaining records for a number of different shares and trusts and 2) a tiny bit of me likes to pick out investments and whilst I know the statistics say I will not outperform a tracker, I am fully aware of that and assess it will not make a material meaningful difference to the value of my overall portfolio.

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: September 29th, 2019, 9:21 pm
by vagrantbrain
If you want to go all-in then maybe consider some pure growth plays: biotech (BIOG, IBT), tech (ATT, PCT), small caps (JUSC, EAT) or frontier markets (BRFI)

The volatility might test your nerve but the rewards may be worth it over the very long term

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 1st, 2019, 10:09 am
by monabri
I'm surprised to see EAT ( European Assets Trust) feature here?

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 1st, 2019, 11:34 pm
by vagrantbrain
monabri wrote:I'm surprised to see EAT ( European Assets Trust) feature here?


From their website:

"The Trust seeks to generate attractive long-term capital growth through investment in quoted small and medium-sized companies in Europe, excluding the UK. As well as capital growth the company aims to offer an attractive dividend, with payments made in January, April, July and October of each year."

Admittedly they've got a lot of seeking still to do given recent performance!

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 3rd, 2019, 8:25 am
by Parky
vagrantbrain wrote:
monabri wrote:I'm surprised to see EAT ( European Assets Trust) feature here?


From their website:

"The Trust seeks to generate attractive long-term capital growth through investment in quoted small and medium-sized companies in Europe, excluding the UK. As well as capital growth the company aims to offer an attractive dividend, with payments made in January, April, July and October of each year."

Admittedly they've got a lot of seeking still to do given recent performance!


From their latest Factsheet (available on Morningstar and elsewhere):-

"Trust aims: To achieve growth of capital through investment in quoted small and medium-sized companies in Europe, excluding the United Kingdom. A high distribution policy has been adopted and dividends are paid from a mix of income and capital reserves."

Doesn't look like a Growth company to me :?

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 3rd, 2019, 2:57 pm
by Gengulphus
With my bold:

Parky wrote:From their latest Factsheet (available on Morningstar and elsewhere):-

"Trust aims: To achieve growth of capital through investment in quoted small and medium-sized companies in Europe, excluding the United Kingdom. A high distribution policy has been adopted and dividends are paid from a mix of income and capital reserves."

Doesn't look like a Growth company to me :?

Need I say more?

Gengulphus

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 3rd, 2019, 5:05 pm
by Parky
Gengulphus wrote:With my bold:

Parky wrote:From their latest Factsheet (available on Morningstar and elsewhere):-

"Trust aims: To achieve growth of capital through investment in quoted small and medium-sized companies in Europe, excluding the United Kingdom. A high distribution policy has been adopted and dividends are paid from a mix of income and capital reserves."

Doesn't look like a Growth company to me :?

Need I say more?

Gengulphus


Maybe I didn't make myself clear. EAT has turned any growth it may have achieved into income. The share price now is roughly what it was in early 2017. Therefore EAT itself is not a growth company and not growing at all, (whatever the source of it's income). :D I suppose you could re-invest the income and call it growth, but not worth arguing about really.

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 3rd, 2019, 9:40 pm
by Gengulphus
Parky wrote:Maybe I didn't make myself clear. EAT has turned any growth it may have achieved into income. The share price now is roughly what it was in early 2017. Therefore EAT itself is not a growth company and not growing at all, (whatever the source of it's income). :D I suppose you could re-invest the income and call it growth, but not worth arguing about really.

Thanks for the explanation. Not looking for an argument either, but just to explain where I was coming from: it's that the behaviour of an investment trust as an investment is more fundamentally controlled by what its investments are than by what it itself is as a company. If one invests in EAT, one is fundamentally invested in the European growth-focussed companies that it invests in. The fact that EAT is itself a UK (*) high-distribution investment trust does perturb that picture, e.g. by making its dividends subject to UK tax and its share price subject to premiums and discounts, but fundamentally an investment in EAT does well if the European growth-focussed companies it invests in do well and badly if they do badly, and the investor's choices won't alter that - whereas as you indicate, the investor can make choices about how they run their portfolio to convert the portfolio's investments' returns between portfolio income and portfolio growth.

So basically, I saw the trust aims you quoted as saying that investing in EAT would fundamentally be investing in growth-focussed small-to-medium European companies, with a bit of a veneer on top of that to deliver their returns as dividends from a UK company.

(*) Since March, in case any readers haven't kept up with developments! ;-)

Gengulphus

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 4th, 2019, 8:18 am
by Parky
Gengulphus wrote:
Parky wrote:Maybe I didn't make myself clear. EAT has turned any growth it may have achieved into income. The share price now is roughly what it was in early 2017. Therefore EAT itself is not a growth company and not growing at all, (whatever the source of it's income). :D I suppose you could re-invest the income and call it growth, but not worth arguing about really.

Thanks for the explanation. Not looking for an argument either, but just to explain where I was coming from: it's that the behaviour of an investment trust as an investment is more fundamentally controlled by what its investments are than by what it itself is as a company. If one invests in EAT, one is fundamentally invested in the European growth-focussed companies that it invests in. The fact that EAT is itself a UK (*) high-distribution investment trust does perturb that picture, e.g. by making its dividends subject to UK tax and its share price subject to premiums and discounts, but fundamentally an investment in EAT does well if the European growth-focussed companies it invests in do well and badly if they do badly, and the investor's choices won't alter that - whereas as you indicate, the investor can make choices about how they run their portfolio to convert the portfolio's investments' returns between portfolio income and portfolio growth.

So basically, I saw the trust aims you quoted as saying that investing in EAT would fundamentally be investing in growth-focussed small-to-medium European companies, with a bit of a veneer on top of that to deliver their returns as dividends from a UK company.

(*) Since March, in case any readers haven't kept up with developments! ;-)

Gengulphus


I agree with everything you've said. It does demonstrate very well, though, that you have to look a bit further than the company name, share price and the dividend yield to understand what you are buying.

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 4th, 2019, 8:59 am
by jonesa1
Other than Scottish Mortgage, Smithson Finsbury and Lindsell Train, are there any ITs which hold a concentrated / conviction portfolio? One similar to Lindsell Train Global Equity (without the LTI premium) would be useful.

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 5th, 2019, 9:22 am
by Parky
jonesa1 wrote:Other than Scottish Mortgage, Smithson Finsbury and Lindsell Train, are there any ITs which hold a concentrated / conviction portfolio? One similar to Lindsell Train Global Equity (without the LTI premium) would be useful.


See the link below for "The Conviction 5". It's from 2012, but still relevant today, even though the performance data is of course out-of-date.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161116024 ... 00356.aspx

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 7th, 2019, 12:22 pm
by SoBo65
jonesa1 wrote:Other than Scottish Mortgage, Smithson Finsbury and Lindsell Train, are there any ITs which hold a concentrated / conviction portfolio? One similar to Lindsell Train Global Equity (without the LTI premium) would be useful.


One that I hold is Manchester and London Investment Trust MNL, does not get much publicity (maybe a low marketing budget!), came to my attention when mentioned in the Daily telegraph a few year back when on a larger discount than now.

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 7th, 2019, 1:26 pm
by Dod101
The trouble with the Conviction 5 is that three of them are firmly in the wealth preservation camp rather than being growth focussed which is what this Board is about.

Independent IT might be worth a look by jonesa1. It is definitely a 'one off' being run by Max Ward and filled with his 'conviction' shares. It is quite volatile but has done well over a long period. Max Ward and the Chairman Douglas McDougall each have a large holding in the trust. If investing for the long term my only concern would be that Ward is getting on a bit and there is no obvious successor that I have heard of.

Dod

Re: Growth Focussed Investment Trusts & Funds

Posted: October 7th, 2019, 3:48 pm
by monabri
For growth focussed ITs, I'd be looking to the East. I'd rule out Europe (including UK) and possibly ITs that are v. strong in US content (*)

I'd therefore "offer up"

Baillie Gifford's - Pacific Horizons (PHI)

Fidelity - Fidelity China Special Situations (FCSS)

JP Morgan China - (JMC).

I'm off to read the latest edition of "Trust" from BG that has dropped through the letterbox this morning. I was particularly struck by the reports in the previous edition of how much research funding China is spending (example: Alibaba has committed to $15b (2017) in R&D - 5 times the UK's top 5 R&D spending companies). It mentions China being a World leader in Quantum computing, embyonics & computer sciences and Chinese companies logged the highest number of patents in the World (2017).



(*) presents a dilemma as Scottish Mortgage SMT is ~50% US , 20% China, rest Europe. What they have got going for them for UK investors is that they are FTSE100, have an established pedigree and "brand". One can only hope they continue to do what they do!