The recent Skin in the Game report highlighted that Bill Ackman, the US hedge fund billionaire, has more than £1bn invested in the UK-listed investment trust that is an offshoot of his main business.
With that in mind we thought we would have a look under the bonnet of the £7bn Pershing Square investment trust, the vehicle which Ackman runs for UK wealth managers.
A glance at our database reveals the fund is owned by just one of the allocators we cover, and has had no new buyers or sellers over the past year.
In performance terms, the trust has returned 54 per cent, compared with 37 per cent for the AIC North America sector in the same time period.
Much of that outperformance has come as a consequence of a material underweight to big technology stocks: the only FAANG stock to impact performance in 2023 is a holding in Alphabet.
More common are exposures to the US consumer, with substantial positions in restaurant chains and mortgage lenders.
The resilience of the US consumer has been one of the biggest economic stories of the year.
The most popular active US equity fund among DFMs (excluding income funds) is Dodge & Cox US Stock which has just a 6 per cent exposure to consumer products.
It has, so far this year, been among the worst performers in its sector.
Of course DFMs often struggle to buy investment trusts for liquidity reasons, and that’s why Pershing Square, even with just one DFM owning it, is an anomaly in appearing on our database at all, but at £7bn in size, it may come onto more radars in the near future.
