The latest Q and A for premium subscribers is with James Hart, the Investment Director of the Witan investment trust (ticker: WTAN) and someone who has been analysing and investing in investment trusts for around three decades. Although Witan's global equity portfolio is run on a multi-manager basis, up to 15% of the trust's assets are invested in investment trusts, primarily specialist ones that allow exposure to specific asset classes which are not readily available through a traditional multi-manager approach.
Why the interest in this trust? James Hart, who runs the Witan portfolio alongs...
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The latest Q and A for premium subscribers is with Matthew Hose, the lead investment trust analyst at the American broker/investment bank Jefferies, which has recently expanded its research into alternative asset investment trusts. In our conversation we discuss a number of sub-sectors in the alternative asset space, including renewable energy, listed private equity, infrastructure, growth capital and shipping. Matthew has been analysing investment trusts for over a decade and has been at Jefferies for the past seven. Before that he worked for seven years at J.P.Morgan Cazenove.
Matthew Hos...
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The latest Q and A for premium subscribers is with Hamish Baillie, the manager of the Ruffer Investment Company, a £600m multi-asset investment trust with an absolute return mandate which sits in the Flexible Investment sector. The objective of the trust is to deliver a return that is at least twice the return on cash while aiming never to lose money for investors on any 12-month period. The trust published its interim results this week and was highlighted in the recent review of our newly created defensive investment trust portfolio.
Hamish Baillie Here is a reminder of the background to thi...
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Given the unfolding saga of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I am including a link to the latest Moses and Methusaleh podcast which I produce in collaboration with my friend the fund manager and author Peter Seilern. As an Austrian by both and having lived for many years in Europe, he brings an invaluable Central European perspective on the tragic conflict which is unfolding on the eastern borders of Europe. The podcast was recorded on Monday morning (February 28th) and I am posting it immediately for obvious reasons. I also include an edited extract from his latest investor letter.
This is t...
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Our latest Q and A for premium subscribers is with Stuart Widdowson, the manager of the Odyssean investment trust (ticker: OIT), a company that I have followed for several years and was recently introduced to the Money Makers portfolios. In this Q and A, we discuss how the trust seeks to exploit the undervaluation of smaller company stocks. Odyssean IPOed in May 2018 and has a market capitalisation of £150 million. Stuart Widdowson earlier spent seven years as the manager of Strategic Equity Capital.
I would like to start by asking you to remind us what is distinctive about your approach. I ...
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Our latest Q and A for premium subscribers is with Russell Napier, a financial historian and market strategist, who made his name in Asia in the 1990s analysing the so-called Asian crisis. He has since returned to Scotland where he founded the Library of Mistakes, an educational charity that houses an archive of important works in financial history. He is also the chairman of the MidWynd investment trust, a professional investment consultant and a regular podcaster and commentator on financial matters. In this Q and A, we discuss the role of financial history in understanding current market de...
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My latest Q and A is with Nick Greenwood, the manager of the MIGO Opportunities Trust, a fund of investment trusts. Its aim is to find special situations in the investment trust world, where the share price for any number of reasons may not reflect a trust's potential value. This mostly means looking for less well known trusts that he thinks are trading at undeserved or excessively wide discounts.
Nick Greenwood has been managing this trust (formerly known as Miton Global Opportunities Trust) since 2004. Our last Q and A with him was in May last year (link here). For technical reasons, the ...
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Our latest Q and A for premium subscribers is with Simon Edelsten, the manager of the MidWynd investment trust, a global thematic fund in which he owns a substantial personal stake. We last had a Q and A with Simon a year ago (link here), and the trust was also the subject of one of our recent in-depth profiles. It is a member of the 2010 Money Makers portfolio.
In the Q and A I start by asking Simon to explain why he recently described market conditions as "weird" and we also discuss why he thinks those market conditions have changed in the last 12 months and "chiselling out" good real ret...
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Our latest Q and A for premium subscribers is with Peter Hewitt, the manager of the BMO Managed Portfolio trust. It has two share classes (tickers: BMPI and BMPG) and two portfolios, one for income and one for growth, both of them invested solely in other investment trusts. We last had a Q and A with Peter in May last year (link here), and he was also a guest on the weekly investment trust podcast in September, a week when Simon Elliott was away.
What is the interest in this trust? For one thing, it is a useful one stop shop for around 15,000 private investors and the income share class (t...
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Our latest Q and A for premium subscribers is with Simon Barnard, co-founder and lead manager of the Smithson investment trust, which has been in the Investment Trusts Handbook model investment trust portfolio since the trust launched in October 2018 and has performed very strongly since then. Here is a link to the last Q and A we did with Simon in December 2020. You can also read Stuart Watson's profile from March last year by following this link.
When we spoke just over a year ago, Smithson was coming off its second successive year of strong growth, having more than doubled in size to a £2 ...
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