The complex instrument issue does seem to be affecting more and more trusts on various platforms of late. I’ve not encountered it myself yet but I would hope a more sensible balance can be struck.

The discounts on pure equity trusts haven’t widened as much as other trusts — maybe from 5% to 10% on average — but it seems reasonable to assume that the trend should reverse at some point once the sector has digested the various cost disclosure and demand/supply imbalance issues.

It’s certainly been a tough few years for the sector as a whole and those sectors have been hit harder than most. Styles and sectors ebb and flow all the time of course and my general approach is to try and avoid getting too cute when timing such things. I think that’s a hard thing to do and something I find particularly difficult to do consistently.

I suspect I might move more towards trackers at a later stage when I want to spend more time doing other things, and I think that’s a perfectly valid approach. But for now I love the challenge of investing too much! The garden seems to have screaming children in it for now so it’s not as peaceful as it could be 🙂

They haven’t really needed to market the trust in the past as the shares often traded around NAV or at a premium and the fact Lord Rothschild was at the helm was a big draw. No harm in contacting the trust to make your views known… https://www.ritcap.com/contact-us

I’m content with lagging during bull markets as long as they capture at least SOME of the gains, and reduce the fall during bear markets. Seems like they have been sort-of delivering on this promise in terms of NAV, at least.

Why is the fund not marketing more to investors? Is there anything that we as shareholders can push them on?

Very difficult to say when RCP’s discount might narrow. It feels rather entrenched now and even the significant level of buybacks over the last year have had little impact (although perhaps the discount would have been even wider without them). I suspect we will need to see multiple things improve to narrow the rating.

Personally, I want to see much more from the trust in terms of marketing to investors and explain what they are doing with the underlying strategy and how they plan to move forward without Lord Rothschild. I also don’t like the 50/50 hedged benchmark they use as it seems unnecessarily complicated and has flattered their performance for a long time now. I don’t mind the fact they use hedging but breaking down the NAV return with attribution analysis would be a clearer way of showing what benefit this has.

Of course, performance needs to pick up as well although I think RIT will always find itself lagging during long bull markets given the way it is set up.

Any idea when RCP may re-rate and close the discount? It’s one of my biggest positions and it’s so frustrating to watch the whole market explode while RCP is still lower than it was back in April 2020. Seems like a great buy at -30% but I can’t bring myself to buy any more of it.