If you are serious about getting rich from investing, you’ll need to make full use of your £20,000 ISA allowance for 2017/18 before midnight’s deadline. Then you’ll need to start thinking about your 2018/19 allowance as well. The following two investment trusts would be great places to start.
Starting point
These two investment trusts offer ISA investors a broad spread of global stocks and shares that could neatly overlay your existing portfolio. So if time is tight, you can dive in pretty quickly rather than working out how they fit in with your existing investments. Alternatively, if you’re a newbie investor, these two high-powered trusts could give you a one-stop portfolio with a single double swoop.
Both have a tremendous history. Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust (LSE: FRCL) was launched way back in 1868, while Monks Investment Trust (LSE: MNKS) unfurled its flag in 1929.
Colonial power
Foreign & Colonial aims to deliver long-term growth in capital and income by investing in an internationally diversified portfolio of stocks, plus some unlisted securities and private equity. It has a massive £3.36bn under management and currently offers a dividend yield of 1.67%. However, its growth is what catches the eye, returning 95.9% over the past five years, according to Trustnet.com, beating its global benchmark index which delivered 82.7%.
Monks, now run by asset manager Baillie Gifford with £1.6bn under management, also invests in a diversified portfolio of global stocks although its prime aim is capital growth, with a yield of just 0.17%. The growth has more than made up for that, with the trust rising a hugely impressive 126.5% over the past five years. This has been a favourite of mine for years and has amply justified my faith.
Go global
What you get in both cases is a broad coverage of global stocks, regions and markets but with the added zip of successful fund management, as well as gearing, where the fund manager borrows money to invest. Gearing can accelerate returns in the good times and losses in the bad. These trusts are no benchmark huggers as they take risks in a bid to beat the market and, as their performance shows, those risks are paying off.
Both have heaps of US exposure. Foreign & Colonial is 48.8%-invested there, while Monks stands at 44.7%. The US has, of course, performed well lately, boosting both trusts. Foreign & Colonial has relatively lower global emerging markets exposure than Monks, at 12.7% against 21%. However, they also offer roughly similar exposure to their other key regions, Europe, Japan and the UK.
Premium choice
Inevitably there is some crossover, big names such as Amazon, Alphabet and Alibaba all appear in their top 10 holdings, but differentiation as well. If I had to choose one, it would be Monks, largely due to its superior growth record. It is in demand, currently trading at a premium of 1.48%, against a 2.99% discount for Foreign & Colonial.
You could invest this year and next year’s ISA allowance and, if you keep topping them up year after year, given time and a fair wind they could make you seriously rich.
