How to go off the beaten track

If you want to invest away from the mainstream, look to the specialist investment trust market. Merryn Somerset Webb reveals the secrets of picking the best trusts - and one of the biggest bargains around at the moment.

Over the past year or so I've become increasingly obsessed with investing via exchange-traded funds. I love the fact that you can use them to get diversified exposure to whole sectors or even markets, and that you can buy and sell them in real-time just like individual shares.

And of course I love the fact that they are cheap buying an ETF will usually cost you less than a quarter of the price of an actively managed unit trust in the same sector. But, however tempting it is to spend all one's time swooning over the opportunities offered by ETFs, they can't yet do everything. They can't get you into timber, for example, or Africa, or the Indian property market.

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
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.