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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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 about inflationary pressures for many years, putting a large chunk of its po...
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Nobody is more disappointed than me that Simon Elliott is leaving Winterflood Securities to take up a senior management role at J.P.Morgan Asset Management. As a result he will no longer be able to continue co-hosting the weekly Money Makers investment trust podcast. He has been a brilliant partner in this venture over the last two and a quarter years, as all the compliments that have come in since the news came out testify. He will be a tough act to follow.
Onwards and upwards? Simon bought a unique set of knowledge and skills to the podcast. As a result it seems sensible to experiment a lit...
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Capital Gearing Trust (ticker: CGT) is one of a handful of defensive investment trusts that sit in the AIC's Flexible sector. It has been listed since 1973 and managed by Peter Spiller since 1982 although the trust's investment team has been broadened in recent years with Alastair Laing joining in 2011 and Chris Clothier in 2015. Famously, Capital Gearing has only had one down year since Spiller took charge -- a 2% loss in 2013/14. Since the turn of the century, it has held a reduced proportion of its portfolio in risk assets such as equities preferring index-linked bonds to protect against in...
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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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This week's profile features Round Hill Music Royalty (ticker: RHM), one of the two music royalty funds that have joined the London market since 2018. The Q and A is with Hamish Baillie, the manager of the Ruffer Investment Company (ticker: RICA). I will follow up these general notes on the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with a market video.
Ukraine and beyond This has been the week in which the world woke up to the full horror of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the gravity of the humanitarian and the heightened geopolitical threat which Putin's Russia now poses. The sight of...
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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 two other popular wealth preservation trusts -- namely Capital Gearing and Ru...
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Jonathan Davis Stuart Watson's fund profile this weekend looks in depth at the European Opportunities investment trust, managed by Alex Darwall, a high profile manager who left Jupiter Asset Management, where he managed the trust previously, to form his own independent investment company in 2019. When a well publicised accounting scandal at the German company Wirecard knocked holes in the value of his largest holding last year, the trust got off to a sticky start - but is it now on the way back? The Q and A this week is with Helen Steers, lead manager of the Pantheon International private equi...
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Jonathan Davis The markets are quiet so it is a good time to catch up on some reading and wider research. The notebook therefore is in diary format this week, highlighting a small sample of the things that caught my eye. Stuart Watson has added an interesting profile of Montanaro European Smaller Companies. The Q and A this week is with Alex O'Cinneide, CEO of the investment firm that manages Gore Street Energy Storage, one of two trusts that have recently raised big sums from investors to support their entry into this important sub-sector of the energy transition theme. (Disclosure: I recentl...
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Jonathan Davis This week I have recorded a market review video, as well as some further market thoughts below, to be followed next week by a second video looking at the behaviour of the model portfolio and recent investment trust performance. Stuart Watson, our new contributor, has added half a dozen fund profiles from his archive which you can find here (link), as well as some additional commentary in the weekly review of trust news and data. The Q and A this week is with Duncan Baillie, the manager of the Ruffer Investment Company (link here), which includes many pertinent points about curre...
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