Page 42 - DIY Investor Magazine | Issue 32

I don’t have precise data but I reckon global markets have returned roughly 14% a year over the last 10 years, 7% over the last 20, and 9% over the last 30.
The UK market has returned roughly 8% a year over 10 years, 6% over 20, and 8% over 30; these are just estimates so I haven’t put the numbers in the table.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that trust discounts have narrowed over the last few decades and this means the share price total returns shown will be a little higher than the underlying net asset value returns.
‘THE ONLY MANAGER TO RUN ONE OF THESE VETERAN TRUSTS FOR THE WHOLE 30-YEAR PERIOD’
SECTOR SPLIT
In terms of sectors, 12 of these veteran funds focus on the UK, 12 are Global, 3 each are Asia and Flexible, and 2 each are North America and Europe.
Somewhat surprising, to me anyway, is that only 3 of these funds have a smaller company focus but that may be because this sort of specialism, at least in terms of the timeframe we are looking at here, is a relatively recent phenomenon.
LONG-TERM MANAGERS
Quite a few funds will have changed their remit at some point over the last 30 years so that may have an impact on their figures.
Baillie Gifford China Growth was an Asian Pacific fund up until quite recently, for example, and there will have been numerous fund manager and/or fund management group changes, too.
Special mention should go to Job Curtis of City of London who I believe is the only manager to run one of these veteran trusts for the whole 30-year period.
James Anderson at Scottish Mortgage (who is retiring soon) and Nick Train at Finsbury Growth & Income have both been in place for 21 years.
RETURNS BY DECADE
Another way of looking at this data is to analyse how each trust did in each of the three past decades to gauge their consistency of returns a little better.
There is a select group of four trusts that have produced in excess of 10% annualised in each of the last three decades — AVI Global, TR Property, Canadian General Investments, and Finsbury Growth & Income.
‘A SELECT GROUP OF FOUR TRUSTS THAT HAVE PRODUCED IN EXCESS OF 10% ANNUALISED IN EACH OF THE LAST THREE DECADES’
Scottish Mortgage and BMO Global Smaller Companies both came pretty close though. None of these trusts has produced a negative total return in any decade (but see the earlier comments on survivorship bias) although JPMorgan Japanese came close on two occasions.
Obviously, we are looking at arbitrary periods when doing any sort of analysis like this and investing fashions play a big part in who does best and worst in any given period.
DIY Investor Magazine · Feb 2022 42