@PK — It looks like the open-ended fund has underperformed the investment trust by about 2% in total since it launched in May 2016, so I guess that needs to be weighed up against any stamp duty savings. However, that 2% gap only seemed to open up in the last few months so it may not be permanent and there have been periods when the open-ended fund has been ahead by a similar margin.

I guess it’s also worth considering that if CGT ever got more bullish (which seems a distant prospect for the foreseeable future!) and decided to use its borrowing powers then you would expect the open-ended fund to lag behind a little at that point. That’s assuming, of course, that CGT called the markets correctly and was right to gear up.

Quoted Data has reviewed both CGT and the Absolute Return fund a few times in the same research note so it might be worth looking at those to see if they highlight any other differences. I didn’t see much on a quick review.
https://quoteddata.com/company/capital-gearing-cgt/

I noticed that the manager also launched an equivalent open ended fund (CG Absolute Return Fund). Would be interested to hear your thoughts on this vs. the trust. Performance seems to be very similar but from what I’ve gathered, the open ended fund prefers ETFs over ITs for size? For the same risk profile, the open ended fund would save a bit of entry cost from savings in stamp duty.

Thanks, DIY. Yes, I would suspect a fund like CGT is probably going to be a laggard when it comes to full-on environmentally friendly investing. I didn’t pick up any references to it when reading their recent reports.

I have been transitioning my portfolio to fossil-free this year and unfortunately I had to sell my holding of this trust to complete the process due to its weighting to the FTSE100 ETF.

I have been in correspondence with Mr Laing trying to persuade them to avoid the oil companies but I get the feeling they are not (yet) so switched on to the threats from climate. That said, I was pleased to see the addition of the renewables earlier this year but I suspect that was purely for income rather than a concern for the environment.