Baillie Gifford is Bonkers

Linton

A_T wrote: »

A FTSE 250 tracker was chosen because there are very few tracker funds which have a history of more then 10 years. A global tracker would have been used had an appropriate one existed. Japanese smaller and pork belly futures ( ) are not very diversified. The 250 contains a number of ITs like Monks, Bankers, Personal Assets, Fidelity China SS, Harbourvest PE so it's actually quite diversified - although obviously not as much as a global index tracker. Anyway the point being over long periods of time it's difficult to beat the index.

My point is you have chosen an index with little relevance to the comparison funds so says nothing about whether beating the index is easy or difficult. Whatever the appropriate comparison is, it isnt the FTSE250. In global terms the FTSE250 is pretty obscure - perhaps about 1% of the total world market. So why choose it? Why would investor in 1998 have chosen it without your advantage of retrospection? They would not know that it would turn out to be one of the best performing indexes globally.


It seems to me a remarkable achievement for the BG ITs which have the freedom to invest in anything they want anywhere in the world to be able to match one of the best performing niche indexes without having the powers of Mystic Meg. Surely a sensible comparison would be with a real global index - this is closer to what an index investor in 1998 would have chosen. Over the past 20 years the FTSE World Index has increased by about 300%, the FTSE250 by about 600% and SMI about 900%. So the ITs have wildly out-performed "The Index".

Alexland

For what it's worth when I first bought a tracker circa 10 to 15 years ago I ended up with an M&G fund following the FTSE All Share Index. It seemed a fairly normal thing to do at the time.

bostonerimus

BG American was tracking a US equity index up to April 2017 and then it took off and has significantly outperformed. But 5 years of performance isn't a retirement. The next 20 years will be interesting. Does anyone know how it'd done vs say, S@P500, since inception in 1997?

DennisTenus

A_T wrote: »

Indeed. Monks have only recently shown good performance by going heavy on NASDAQ listed stocks. Really if you like this kind of approach you might as well use a NASDAQ tracker ETF.

The same goes for other celebrated ITs. Really over the long term they're not doing anything special.

What site did you use for that graph?

username12345678

Looks like Morningstar.

DennisTenus

username12345678 wrote: »

Looks like Morningstar.

Thanks, the portfolio manager?

Linton

Trustnet/tools/charting will produce similar graphs.

aroominyork

Alexland wrote: »

The board of the Schroeder UK Growth trust seems to rate BG's ability to invest in the UK. It's not often a board excercise their power to completely change the portfolio manager.

http://citywire.co.uk/investment-trust-insider/news/baillie-gifford-to-take-over-schroder-uk-growth/a1110175

Presumably BG will want to take ownership of the trust. Is some kind of option to do so likely to have been built into the agreement with Schroeder’s to manage it?

Alexland

aroominyork wrote: »

Presumably BG will want to take ownership of the trust. Is some kind of option to do so likely to have been built into the agreement with Schroeder!!!8217;s to manage it?

The trust's board is independent and they lost confidence in Schroders and have given the job to BG who will be pleased to take the management fee ongoing. As a result the trust is being renamed.

Prism

Between my wife and I we have (or have had) allocations to BG Japan, China, Developed Asia and Scottish Mortgage. The UK is one place where they haven't really attracted my interest. Lots of decent funds to pick from with a UK focus (and plenty of shockers)