Saba Capital and the Baillie Gifford-run Edinburgh Worldwide (EWI) are at loggerheads again, a year after the activist first tried to oust its directors and replace them with its preferred alternatives. This time, a lot of focus has been on EWI's stake in SpaceX, where it recently sold down a large chunk of its holding a few months before a large increase in the company's valuation. Here, we look at the history of SpaceX in the various Baillie Gifford trusts that have invested in it. At $800bn, SpaceX is the world's most highly valued private company, and it is rumoured to be targeting an IPO ...
This is a premium article for our subscribers.
Please log in below to read it, or find out how to join the Money Makers Circle.
Scottish Mortgage (ticker: SMT) was founded in 1909 and has been managed by Baillie Gifford throughout its existence. For the last several decades, it has been one of the largest trusts on the London market, surpassing £100m in assets in the late 1960s, £1bn in the early 1990s, and £10bn in 2020. SMT was managed by Max Ward during the 1990s and then by James Anderson from 2000 to 2022. The current managers are Tom Slater, who has worked on the trust since 2009 and was co-manager from 2015 onwards, and Lawrence Burns, who joined in 2021. Anderson was key in developing the trust's current focus ...
This is a premium article for our subscribers.
Please log in below to read it, or find out how to join the Money Makers Circle.
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...
This is a premium article for our subscribers.
Please log in below to read it, or find out how to join the Money Makers Circle.
Jonathan Davis A reminder that our content is now being published as it is produced, with a single summary email, barring technical glitches, on Sunday mornings. This week's profile features the specialist property trust LXI REIT. My Q and A is with Simon Edelsten, lead manager of the Mid Wynd investment trust, which follows a global thematic approach. Simon started his career working for the legendary fund manager Nils Taube before joining Artemis and taking over the management of Mid Wynd in 2014.
Markets and trust performance This week saw the latest hefty annual review from the brokers N...
This is a premium article for our subscribers.
Please log in below to read it, or find out how to join the Money Makers Circle.
Scottish Mortgage needs little introduction, being both the largest investment trust with a market cap of £22bn and the best-performing of the last decade with an astonishing 1,318% return. After a 110% return in 2020, long-time manager James Anderson announced that he would be stepping down in April 2022 after more than 20 years at the helm. Scottish Mortgage is perhaps most famous for its big bets on the likes of Amazon and Tesla but it's recently eased back on these in favour of vaccine maker Moderna and other healthcare stocks that make extensive use of technology. Digitisation of the econ...
This is a premium article for our subscribers.
Please log in below to read it, or find out how to join the Money Makers Circle.
Baillie Gifford US Growth launched in 2018, making it the first new Baillie Gifford trust to list since Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon in 1985. Modelled on the popular open-ended Baillie Gifford American fund, US Growth also invests in unlisted companies and it has been one of the best-performing investment trusts on the London market since its IPO. It's consistently traded at a small premium but in common with most other Baillie Gifford trusts, it's been a pretty volatile ride.
2018 was the last year that we saw a significant number of equity investment trusts join the market with the likes of ...
This is a premium article for our subscribers.
Please log in below to read it, or find out how to join the Money Makers Circle.
Jonathan Davis The notebook this week comments on inflation, the outlook for property trusts and some remarkable evidence about the poor performance of pension funds and university endowments since the global financial crisis, which only serves, in my opinion, to enhance the attractions of the best investment trusts. Peter Spiller, the long serving manager of Capital Gearing Trust, expands on the future of the sector in this week's Q and A, and reiterates the equally valid point that investment trusts have no automatic right to exist and a good many are not doing enough to justify their existe...
This is a premium article for our subscribers.
Please log in below to read it, or find out how to join the Money Makers Circle.
This has been another choppy week in the markets, notable mainly for the fact that the rise in US bond yields persists. This is not unexpected, and it only takes the 10-year Treasury yield back to where it was before the pandemic hit, but it continues to bear down on the performance of the equity and corporate bond markets, while real yields continue to edge up, unhelpfully for gold. The Federal Reserve has so far resisted the pressure to change its policy stance, despite the US bond market having its worst start to the year for many years.
Jonathan Davis James Anderson's departure The plann...
This is a premium article for our subscribers.
Please log in below to read it, or find out how to join the Money Makers Circle.
Jonathan Davis The Scottish Mortgage effect As Simon Elliott noted in our weekly podcast, the market makers in Scottish Mortgage have had an unprecedentedly busy time in the last few weeks. As a large and liquid trust that now sits comfortably in the FTSE 100 index, it has become a go to option for many traders, not just investors with normal longer term horizons. It is hard to recall a similar case where, in the absence of specific news, a well capitalised diversified investment fund has witnessed such dramatic volatility over such a short period of time. I am not sure it is a healthy...
This is a premium article for our subscribers.
Please log in below to read it, or find out how to join the Money Makers Circle.
© 2026 Money Makers