Fund of the week: Britain’s Mr Goldfinger

Graham Birch, manager of Merrill Lynch’s £600m Gold & General Fund, has had quite a year, says Patrick Collinson in The Guardian.

Graham Birch, manager of Merrill Lynch's £600m Gold & General Fund, has had quite a year, says Patrick Collinson in The Guardian.

Birch, "Britain's Mr Goldfinger", is probably the biggest buyer of gold shares in the world and, thanks to the bull market in the gold price (gold is trading at 25-year highs), his fund is performing "obscenely" well. It's up nearly 50% in the past six months alone, and has seen an average annualised gain of 33.9% over the past five years.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Emma Thelwell

Emma is a former digital journalist with more than 15 years of experience in national news in the UK and overseas. She was an assistant editor at MoneyWeek, covering property, funds, alternative investments and the share tips pages, then Emma moved on to The Daily Telegraph, first as a personal finance reporter and then as a business reporter. 

Emma also worked as a finance correspondent for Ninemsn (Australia’s Channel 9 online) in Sydney, Australia for just over a year, and since then Emma has worked at Channel 4 News as a reporter and producer, and she spent more than 4 years at BBC online. At present Emma is a senior manager for content and thought leadership at PwC.