Two flexible multi-manager investment trusts to buy now

Alliance Trust and Witan investment trusts have different approaches to investing, but both follow strategies that could do well in more volatile markets

Sheep grazing by solar panels
Witan’s largest holding is a climate-change fund
(Image credit: © iStockphoto)

UK investors looking for a single fund giving them access to different geographies, sectors and styles within equity investing are spoilt for choice in the listed investment-trust sector. There are 21 funds that are classified as diversified closed-ended global equity funds, according to broker Numis, including famous names such as Scottish Mortgage. However, two of them stand out for a particular style of management: Alliance Trust (LSE: ATST) and Witan (LSE: WTAN).

These funds invest in a wide variety of listed equities from the developed and developing world. Both are happy to move back and forth between value and growth styles of investing. Both have an avowed dividend income policy, with Alliance Trust’s yield running at 1.6% and Witan’s slightly higher at 2.3%. And both are multi-manager funds, choosing active managers from around the world rather than having a portfolio run by a single in-house manager.

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David C. Stevenson
Contributor

David Stevenson has been writing the Financial Times Adventurous Investor column for nearly 15 years and is also a regular columnist for Citywire. He writes his own widely read Adventurous Investor SubStack newsletter at davidstevenson.substack.com

David has also had a successful career as a media entrepreneur setting up the big European fintech news and event outfit www.altfi.com as well as www.etfstream.com in the asset management space. 

Before that, he was a founding partner in the Rocket Science Group, a successful corporate comms business. 

David has also written a number of books on investing, funds, ETFs, and stock picking and is currently a non-executive director on a number of stockmarket-listed funds including Gresham House Energy Storage and the Aurora Investment Trust. 

In what remains of his spare time he is a presiding justice on the Southampton magistrates bench.