In LoB (Life of Blog) until this year the tide was rising.
It was routine to compare the performance of investments by how much they had gone up; the higher number the better maybe. Now some of us have been left floundering on the beach as the tide has gone out. Here’s the performance of some of my holdings over one year; data from Hargreaves Lansdown. Now the lower number the better except for one – spot the outlier.
MP Evans – 0.94%
Scottish Mortgage – 45.4%
Monks – 27.66%
North Atlantic Smaller Companies – 30.68%
Worldwide Healthcare – 8.83 %
Glaxo – 6.31%
Rolls Royce – 50.01%
Babcock – 18.39%
Caledonia – 4.91%
RIT Capital – 16.97%
And here’s how my two top safety plays did.
McInroy & Wood Balanced Fund – 2.1%
Personal Assets – 3.66%
It’s a snapshot and not fair as some of the biggest fallers had risen the most since I bought them but nevertheless it’s interesting and I think confirms my philosophy that a boring investment that goes up about 8% a year in good times can be cheering when the tide turns. Another aspect is dividends. Both these investment trusts chuck out about 5% a year.
Merchants Trust (yield 5.41%) – 4.98%
Murray International (yield 4.66%) + 11.32%
(Robert holds them both as he takes advice from his in-house investment manager.)
We have been looking in the rear view mirror. What does the future hold? I have absolutely no idea but I am fully invested; i.e. no cash except to pay the bills (mostly Bertie’s). I always imagine equities will go up sometime and since I started investing at fifteen I have never been wrong except when individual companies have gone broke and that hasn’t happened for a long time (read My Mistakes). That’s why I’m happiest in investment trusts. Some of them are at big discounts to their Net Asset Value (NAV): Caledonia 35%, North Atlantic Smaller Companies 33% are the biggest.