Personal Assets Trust (PNL) says its "primary objective is to protect and increase (in that order) the value of shareholders’ funds per share over the long term" and it is the largest of the three wealth preservation trusts in the Flexible sector (the other two being Capital Gearing and Ruffer). PNL was launched in 1983, became self-managed in 1990, and was run by Ian Rushbrook from 1990 until he died after a short illness in 2008. Troy Asset Management was appointed as the management firm in early 2009 and Sebastian Lyon has been the lead manager for the last decade and a half. PNL currently ...
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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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It is good to report that the markets have made a positive start to the year, with both equity and bond markets making gains in the first week of the year, boosted by a positive jobs market data release in the United States. This week I have recorded a video looking at the leaders and laggards of the past year (link below). I will be following that up with a series of videos about the Money Makers portfolios. Stuart's latest profile is of the Monks investment trust (ticker:MNKS).
2022 in hindsight The table of leaders and laggards I talk to in the video this week does not make for happy read...
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My end of year thoughts are quite short. One reason is that by the nature of my involvement in the markets my thinking does not change suddenly at the end of a calendar year, but evolves slowly as time goes by (so you have already heard most of what I think already). A second reason is that I have long eschewed making predictions for the year ahead, since most such exercises often turn out to be worse than unhelpful, as a 12 month time frame is essentially both unpredictable and arbitrary. Most investors sensibly have a longer time horizon and while it makes sense to review your portfolio at r...
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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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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 The notebook this week has more about the 20 trusts I wrote about last week, and a number of shorter notes. There is no Q and A but instead there will be an imminent video about market and trust performance. Looking ahead, I expect to have more news shortly about additional content to round out the offering to circle members, including regular reviews of specific investment trusts.
20 investment trusts (continued) Some more comments on the 20 investment trusts that I recruited for my original 20-strong list in 2010, about which I wrote last week. Alert readers may have noted ...
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