If you’re going back to the future you might not need a time machine, but you will need a good investment trust, analysts at JP Morgan Cazenove have said.
A research note found that Capital Gearing was the best performing trust between 26 October 1985, when Doc Brown and Marty McFly took their DeLorean time machine 30 years into the future, and 2015.
If £10,000 had been invested in Capital Gearing at that time, then assuming that dividends had been reinvested, it would now be worth £464,058. The same sum invested in the FTSE All Share would have produced a money multiple of 15.8 times, or 9.63 per cent a year.
The note said: “Who knows what the next 30 years will bring – maybe still not flying cars, but probably lower fees and hopefully decent real returns from equities, although we would expect much lower nominal returns.
“It is worth noting in passing that Peter Spiller, the manager of the top performing fund, is the most bearish manager in the list.”
| Top 10 performing investment trusts between 26/10/85 and 21/10/15 | ||||
| Trust | % price total return 26/10/85 to 21/10/15 | Annualised return % | Value of £10,000 with dividends reinvested £ | Multiple of £10,000 |
| Capital Gearing | 4540.58 | 13.65 | 464,058 | 46.41 |
| North Atlantic Smaller Cos | 4393.43 | 13.53 | 449,343 | 44.93 |
| Law Debenture | 4237.52 | 13.40 | 433,752 | 43.38 |
| Blackrock Sm Cos | 4172.52 | 13.34 | 427,252 | 42.73 |
| Graphite Enterprise | 4049.38 | 13.23 | 414,938 | 41.49 |
| Electra Private Equity | 3897.03 | 13.09 | 399,703 | 39.97 |
| Finsbury Growth & Income | 3872.77 | 13.07 | 397,277 | 39.73 |
| F&C Global Smaller Cos | 3792.15 | 12.99 | 389,215 | 38.92 |
| Mercantile | 3758.79 | 12.96 | 385,879 | 38.59 |
| Lowland | 3453.98 | 12.65 | 355,398 | 35.54 |
Source: JP Morgan Cazenove
Adviser view
Bob Wilson, of Norfolk-based GreenSky Wealth, said: “Capital Gearing has obviously had a period of very good performance because the performance over recent years has not been fantastic.
“According to Trustnet, it has returned 19.7 per cent over five years compared to the UK All Companies, which has managed 54.6 per cent.
“You do find sometimes that a fund has done well over 10 years, but has significantly outperformed in two of them while the other eight have been crummy.”
