Welcome, Douglas.

I’m a fan of Mid Wynd as well and it’s one of the global trusts that I have considered buying in the last year or so without ever pulling the trigger — my investment life story in many ways!

I did actually cover Mid Wynd at the start of this year, after many people seemed to be expressing their admiration for it. But it’s easy to miss older posts on a blog so here’s a link to it: https://www.itinvestor.co.uk/2020/01/mid-wynd-international/

I think that’s a fair comment on Alliance. Its record of the last couple of decades has put me off as well. I’m not wholly convinced by the multi-manager approach that it and Witan are taking these days although Alliance certainly seems to be making a better fist of it than Witan.

Hi Tom,

Not sure I have seen that Angus suggestion before. Almost like a racy 80/20 portfolio, you could say.

The Nasdaq has been a really tough index to beat since the financial crisis of course. I think it was up an average of 13% from 1995 to 2019, so perhaps a little below SMT over a slightly longer timeframe.

Looking at Trustnet’s charts, though, I’ve got SMT on 628% for the last 10 years and the Invesco QQQ on 550% and iShares Nasdaq 100 on 533%. That’s the SMT share price return, however. On a net asset value basis, it’s up a mere 510%.

Wouldn’t argue with having Smithson or LTI, although given the newness of the former and the wildly oscillating premium of the latter, my own preferred position sizes would be on the small side.

Hi Aaron,

I’m not sure I would have anything that different from what I have now – maybe a little less of the conservative global trusts perhaps.

But that would just be what I thought suited my own investing needs. It’s difficult to come up with a portfolio that would be suitable for a wide range of people, with differing views on risk and investing timescales. And it strays a bit too close to personal financial advice, which I am not authorised to give.

That said, John Baron does a decent job I think of constructing portfolios for different purposes, so it might be worth checking that out for a few ideas to start with. Moneyweek has an investment trust portfolio they follow as well, although it doesn’t have that many holdings in it.

I still struggle with SMT though, and find their reports and think pieces much more interesting than the portfolio. I also still struggle with the fact that it hasn’t outperformed the Nasdaq 100 over 10 years.

On the other hand, the portfolio 10 years ago was fairly different. And going forward the unlisted cos could still juice the returns.

Looking at all the ones you mention, I think I’d still rather have Smithson (though it seems a bit punchy price-wise right now…) on a 10-year view, though he’s still unproven. And LTI.

Thanks as always.

@M — I’m not expecting a major change in strategy as the main team there has been in place for a while now. But if US/big tech doesn’t perform as well over the next several years, then I would expect RIT’s relative performance to get better.

@Maximus — Yes, those who have done best in 2020 are definitely favouring growth/tech strategies and/or have low UK weightings. That could change over the remainder of the year but the likes of Witan will have to do spectacularly well to catch them up.