Seems quite a radical solution to move money out of a dedicated China fund into two global funds which each allocate 0% to shares in Chinese companies.

Although you are right the returns will probably be steadier.

One solution to being bored of staring at a loss is simply to imagine you had bought at today's price, or some other lower price, so that as of today, it isn't a loss. The fund itself doesn't really know or care what price you bought it at.

Iglad ....... Smart move into LTG , I have been in there since April and have growth of 25.32% and with FS since June with growth of 17.61, so well pleased

Another is to stop staring at it

I very nearly invested in SMT, but after reading a lot more about Musk, decided that his attitude to business was not for me. I am surprised that he has had so much backing but SM cannot back out now and must continue to support it, as they do in all their video's. I don't feel that they will prove as good as expected and would not go near them myself.

Tesla is only one holding in SMT (I think it’s about 6%) so I personally wouldn’t choose my investment strategy because of one poor choice of a holding. SMT also invest in many very good companies and always seem to eventually rebound after some big falls in the share price.

Around 10% in Amazon. A company I've never been keen on from a personal perspective. Lack of ethics.

Agree about the ethics point of companies like Amazon but as MPN said, SMT do continue to rebound from a low share price to a high one so its not a bad IT to invest in but certainly not for the faint hearted!

SMT is very high risk - between June 2008 amd November 2008 it dropped by more than 60%. So it would be sensible to think carefully about your % holdings.

On the Amazon point, they have been buyers of Amazon since $40 or so. If they sell it for $1000 a share it was a good investment, though in reality SMT's portfolio turnover is pretty low and they generally don't sell stuff that they like, even if it drops double digit percentages.

However, if you buy their trust today when their Amazon holding is worth over $2000 a share and they later give up and sell it at $1000 a share you might think it a bad investment. Especially if you pay a premium to fair value to buy SMT today and then later sell some of your holdings at a discount to fair value, and the fair value losses made in the meantime were geared up with borrowing.

In terms of FAANGs, they seem to lack Apple, but have holdings to varying degrees in Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google

They also hold the major China Tech Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu

They hold some semiconductor Nvidia (although share price appears to be suffering from the downturn in Bitcoin mining)

It appears to have around 80 holdings, but only 39 listed, the remaining are they private equity?


Polar Capital Trust (similar Tech Trust) holds the FAANGs, this time including Apple

They also hold the major China Tech Tencent and Alibaba, but no Baidu

They hold some semiconductor Nvidia and also AMD

Reading this thread again last night, there appear to be quite a few misapprehensions....
The preoccupation with Tesla seems to continue. It is 3.7% of net assets of this Trust. Not a game changer. If you want to debate Tesla, a separate thread might be better. Yes, Baillie Gifford might be wrong about Tesla, so might the many other posters.

Secondly, the fund manager doesn't care about index performance, or day to day movements in stock prices. You might, and if it bothers you a lot that SMT performance might and will vary a lot from the overall market, don't invest.

Thirdly, it's about 20% invested in unlisted holdings, and yes the proportion has increased quite a bit in the last two years, but it's been well flagged. Rationale is to invest in certain areas before the stocks go public and when equity capital raising may be done on more favourable terms to investors.

No, it's not low risk. Is it very high risk? Depends how you define it. I don't happen to believe that shortish term price volatility is that good a means of measuring risk for long term investors. Permanent partial or total loss of capital is high risk in my book. Yes, there is a risk of partial loss of capital in SMT. Indeed, the managers will freely admit that a not insignificant proportion of their holdings may end up with little or no value. However, a number are likely to, and have, increased factorially in value. Let's assume the fund had 20 holdings, conceptually, the manager might realistically expect one of these to be the next Google or Amazon, two or three to do pretty well, another couple to perform in line with the market, five to underperform, and ten to go bust or close to that for an equity investor. I simplify, but that's not a million miles away from what has happened.

Disclosure - I have held SMT for well over 10 years, it has seriously impacted my wealth, in the right way! I'm now at the stage where I may think about pruning it back a bit, not because I'm suddenly worried about, more because it is now a very significant part of my portfolio, and some rebalancing may be in order. Yes it fell nearly 60% in 2008-9, but the S&P500 Index fell 45% too in $ terms, so if you can't stomach SMT in that scenario, it sounds like equities in general might be a bit rich.

Sounds like there are some people on here who neither understand how the fund is managed, nor should invest in it because of that, as they will end up selling. No, I don't work for Baillie Gifford and never have, but I do know the house quite well.

I've been with SMT since April and I'm more than happy with the performance which has really picked up over the last month or so. I'm not sure if it's the Woodford effect but as long as that share price keeps rising I'm happy. The unlisted companies does not bother me in the slightest as it's only about 20% but I think they have raised the limit to 25%.

Some of the reactions on here towards investing makes me wonder if they should have their money in the building society instead.

The gains I've had with LTG & FS since selling my Fidelity China (invested in LTG & FS) have just helped to cancel out my losses with that fund. So yes It was a smart move but I can't take all the credit as it was poster in another forum who said "you could be staring at those losses for quite some time, so sell and invest elsewhere within your portfolio".

That "hold until it picks up" is what got a lot of Woodford investors stuck in fund they can't get out of.

Since I opened up this thread nearly 2 months ago, the share price has surged to reach its all time high. I'm glad I held on.

Having scrutinised it some more - the upside potential of holdings like Amazon, Alibaba and Tencent (20% combined) is far greater than the downside risk posed by Tesla at 3.7%

Also, making comparisons to Woodford is a bit far fetched, who ran a fund with large unlisted holdings (SMT is a Trust). He also looks more like a betting shop manager than a respectable fund manager.

Since I posted this thread, I have been predicting a surge in the value but surprised it arrived faster than anticipated. Im projecting the value to keep on increasing after having a tough year.

I still believe the managers at SMT and Baillie Gifford are far more effective and competant than many out there.

Within the portfolio Amazon has a lower share price now than a couple of days after your post; fortunately other stuff has gone up instead. But really about half the 'surge' has equally been available from pretty much any other fund with high overseas exposure.

US$100 was worth £78.50 when you posted, but now it's worth £82.50, which means that every dollar of portfolio value has gone up 5% when valued in sterling. For HKD invested in Tencent, HKD100 was £10.01 but is £10.56 today, giving you another 5.5% for free. So really although the portfolio is back at its all time high of around 568p where it was last September, the portfolio is worth fewer dollars than it was then; it's just that at this moment in time, dollars buy a lot of pounds.

You are right that BG are a decent funds group and their approach can generally do very well in rising markets. But concentrated portfolios can be painful when markets (including exchange rates) reverse.

lol I wish but as my platform shows my losses and my gains, anyway looking at it wishing it will go up didn't work my Fidelity China fund selling and investing it into better performing funds (LTG & FS) did.