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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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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Jonathan Davis, editor of the Investment Trusts Handbook, is joined in this week’s edition of the Money Makers Weekly Investment Trust podcast by Sebastian Lyon, manager of the Personal Assets Trust (PNL), and CEO of Troy Asset Management. During their discussion, Jonathan and Sebastian remember the former director of Personal Assets Trust, Robin Angus, who sadly died earlier this year, and they talk about the anthology of his quarterly summaries that have been released as a book, A Shared Journey. This book is available for free as a PDF download.
You can listen to this week’s podcast in full on the audio players below. Alternatively, you can subscribe and download it on most podcast channels including Soundcloud, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher and others.
If you enjoy the weekly podcast, you may also find value in joining The Money Makers Circle. This is a membership scheme that offers subscribers an opportunity to receive additional premium content, including interviews, investment trust performance data, market/portfolio reviews and regular extracts from the editor’s notebook. A subscription costs £8 a month, or a modest £2 a week.
00:24 – Introducing Sebastian Lyon
01:51 – The year in historical context
04:53 – Has the investment game changed?
08:32 – Locking in a loss of wealth
10:23 – Looking at the stock market
14:34 – The problems faced by central banks
17:38 – Could we return to a Goldilocks scenario?
21:27 – Personal Assets Trust (PNL) and other funds
23:50 – Would PNL invest in commodities?
28:58 – Index linked potential
33:51 – Equity exposure
38:18 – Quality stocks
40:24 – Would PNL look at property?
42:24 – The sell-off of the dollar
46:03 – Remembering Robin Angus
53:59 – Close
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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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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 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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Jonathan Davis When the Money Makers circle was launched back in January, I said that I expected that the range and balance of the content would evolve as time went by - and so it is proving. This week I am introducing two new features - the first of a series of periodic shorter podcasts (15 minutes in length) discussing specific topics of current interest - this week gold and bitcoin - and also the first steps towards creating a model income portfolio, to add to the Handbook portfolio that has already been up and running for more than four years. This week I also highlight some further inter...
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