I am experimenting with a series of shorter videos covering specific asset classes and investment trust sectors. The notes this week include the first of these, together with a short summary of my current thinking about the market cycle.
Market overview Once again I have reason to be grateful for technical analysis, which has kept me from making too grievous a mistake in thinking about the equity and bond markets so far this year. The essential message from the charts has been; don't rush to judgment and in particular don't buy too readily the argument that both equity and bond prices are...
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These are my latest thoughts this week (NB I have updated these notes on 6th December to include the latest Home REIT developments). After a period of experimentation I have put together a rota of speakers for the next few weeks of the podcast. Alastair Laing of Capital Gearing Trust will be on next week's podcast, followed by Nick Greenwood and Peter Hewitt the following two weeks. Ewen Lovett-Turner will be back early in the New Year, and I will also be returning to some popular commentators on the alternative asset sectors. We will also be continuing with longer Q and As for the Money Mak...
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I plan to stick with a thoughts of the week approach for now and supplement that with periodic market and portfolio reviews, as well as resuming some longer Q and As with relevant fund managers and analysts, to supplement the rather shorter weekly investment trust podcast that will be the norm from here on. I hope that you are continuing to value and make use of the comprehensive trust profiles which my colleague Stuart Watson produces and find the data, news summaries and outside contributors helpful.
Thoughts of the week
It is uncomfortable still being bearish about equities when there i...
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I plan to stick with a thoughts of the week approach for now and supplement that with periodic market and portfolio reviews, as well as resuming some longer Q and As with relevant fund managers and analysts, to supplement the rather shorter weekly investment trust podcast that will be the norm from here on. I hope that you are continuing to value and make use of the comprehensive trust profiles which my colleague Stuart Watson produces and find the data and news summaries useful.
Thoughts of the week What Buffett says If you are a long term investor, then always worth bearing in mind words ...
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Update: A revised version of this profile was published in September 2026.
Ruffer Investment Company (ticker: RICA) is the only investment trust run by Ruffer LLP and it follows the firm's core strategy, looking to deliver positive returns over any given 12-month period. While the investment trust was launched in 2004, the strategy dates back to the mid-90s. Ruffer LLP manages £26bn assets, mostly for institutional investors, with the investment trust accounting for around £1bn. Like Capital Gearing and Personal Assets, which have a similar wealth-preservation focus, Ruffer has been warning ...
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It is a crazy world out there.
I liked this paragraph from Michael Hartnett in his latest market strategy note. "On June 8th 2020 New York City announced stage 1 "reopening" after 13-week COVID lockdown, permitting curbside pickup from retail outlets. If you had said then that two years later US retail sales would be up 67%, unemployment would fall by 17 million, inflation would surge from 0.1% to 8.3%, oil would soar from $12/b to $120/b, that a pandemic would be followed by war & famine, you would have been thought utterly mad; but that's what happened. 2020 marked a secular low in inf...
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The past week has afforded an opportunity to catch up with the results of some of the best known equity investment trusts, including Scottish Mortgage and Finsbury Growth and Income. Stuart Watson's profile this week is of 3i Infrastructure, and there is a new contributor in the person of Reg Hoare, who explains the principles that underpin the management of his personal pension portfolio. Equity markets continue to fall in what increasingly looks like developing into a full-blown bear market, very much as I feared, with the S&P 500 down the thin end of 20% from its high.
Scottish Mortg...
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UPDATE: CGT produced a rare -3% fall in its NAV for the year to March 2022, followed by gains of 1%, 3%, 4%, and 6% over the years ended March 2023 to March 2026. A 10-for-1 share split took place in July 2026. The shares have traded at a discount since early 2023, so the trust has bought back around 40% of its shares in accordance with its zero discount policy. In 2025, CGT was a public objector to the proposed merger of HICL and TRIG, both run by InfraRed, and a deal was soon abandoned.
Capital Gearing Trust (ticker: CGT) is one of a handful of defensive investment trusts that sit in the AI...
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UPDATE: A revised version of this profile was published in February 2025.
Personal Assets Trust is designed with private investors in mind and famously says its "primary objective is to protect and increase (in that order) the value of shareholders’ funds per share over the long term". It became self-managed in 1990 and was run by Ian Rushbrook from that time until his death in 2008. Sebastian Lyon of Troy Asset Management has been the manager since 2009, employing a similar style to Rushbrook with a large proportion of assets in inflation-linked bonds, similar to the approach taken by the tw...
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Jonathan Davis Stuart Watson's fund profile this weekend looks in depth at Impact Healthcare REIT. Simon Elliott and I did a half-hour session on investment trust fundraising at the Mello Trusts and Funds event this week and you can view that by following the link below. If you missed it, my latest market review video that I posted last week is, I think, still relevant. I would also like to flag up that the next edition of the Investment Trusts Handbook, the fifth annual one, is due out on December 14th. As well as the traditional 280-page hardback, there is also a free e-book download availab...
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