THE £6 billion Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust has declared that global equity markets have “weathered” a raft of geopolitical storms as it reported a 17.5 per cent increase in net asset value (NAV) per share in the six months to September 30, outperforming its benchmark index.
Baillie Gifford’s flagship investment trust, managed by James Anderson and Tom Slater, saw its share price rise by 15.4 per cent, narrowing the discount of its share price to its net asset value. That came as its benchmark FSTE All-World Index gained one per cent in sterling terms over the period.
Although the period saw tensions rise over North Korea and US president Donald Trump continue to generate controversy, as well as the “ongoing saga around Britain’s exit from the European Union”, the trust said global markets “seem to have weathered the various geopolitical events of the summer almost with equanimity”.
The Edinburgh-based trust, which holds stakes in Amazon, Tesla, Facebook, Alphabet and Alibaba, added: “This might have surprised many investors, had they been asked to predict the outcome of such events even just a year ago. The managers do not attempt to make such forecasts. What can be said with confidence is that the Managers will remain focused on the prospects of the underlying operational businesses in the portfolio over their investment time horizon.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here