Investment Trust choices

aroominyork

bowlhead99 wrote: »

So, if they are telling you that their personal objectives for the trust are to get asset growth in excess of FTSE all share and that the way they propose to do that is by investing broadly across international markets to achieve that objective... there you have it. They can graph themselves against that benchmark that they set out to achieve.

Except that...

this from Bankers' KID: "The Company's objectives are to achieve long term asset growth in excess of the FTSE All-Share Index..."

and this from its factsheet: "The Company aims over the long term to achieve capital growth in excess of the FTSE World Index..."

bowlhead99

aroominyork wrote: »

Except that...

this from Bankers' KID: "The Company's objectives are to achieve long term asset growth in excess of the FTSE All-Share Index..."

and this from its factsheet: "The Company aims over the long term to achieve capital growth in excess of the FTSE World Index..."

Fair enough, I hadn't seen a factsheet for a while and had simply opened the Kiid. They do tell you to check the annual report for more info.

Per the latest annual report :"you will note that the board has reviewed the investment objectives and policy. This has been driven by the FCA's thematic review on meeting customer objectives and ensuring that investment objectives and policies are clear, accurate and not ambiguous. Shareholders should rest assured that the existing twin objectives or capital growth and dividend growth remain core to the investment objectives of the company. We have taken the opportunity to consider introducing a global benchmark to judge capital growth over the long term.

After consultation with our manager and corporate broker we have decided to adopt the FTSE World index, an index of global companies. We intend to review performance over a suitable medium to long term period as we do not wish our fund managers to generate excessive trading to move the portfolio into line with the index in seeking to generate short term performance."

So, they are going to start using the FTSE World as a global comparable benchmark and perhaps have not updated their KIID yet or gotten around to changing what chart they draw a picture of, on the factsheet. Still, as they have only half the US exposure and several times the UK exposure of the FTSE World and don't intend to beat that World index over short term periods anyway, I'd suggest it isn't something to get too hung up on if they don't draw a world index chart on their factsheet. Even if the directors choose to use FTSE World as part of their benchmark review when considering overall performance, it doesn't mean *you* need to use that. They and the benchmark allocate their money into different assets.