MoneyWeek portfolio of investment trusts - October 2013 update

Merryn Somerset Webb reviews our portfolio of investment trusts. What should you buy now, and which laggards should you drop?

By now you'll have figured out that when I said I would review our investment trust portfolio every six months, I meant it not as a firm forecast but more as forward guidance'. Just as Mark Carney might start to have a think about UK interest rates when unemployment falls to 7%, I start to look at our portfolio every six months. Neither of us promise to actually do anything. That's why it has been nearly nine months since I covered the portfolio.

Back then, we made no changes. If you had split your cash equally between the trusts in the table below, you would have made just under 8% in capital returns in seven months, and pocketed some healthy dividends. This time the (annualised) numbers aren't quite so good: the funds are up on average 8.25% over the nine months, and have, of course, paid out dividends too. The portfolio has mildly underperformed the market, but given we want it to be long term and defensive (and that you all promised there would be no benchmark complaining), that isn't a huge deal. The trusts have made a good absolute real return, which is what counts.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.