Monks Investment Share Discussion Threads

[vacendak] 24/5/2019 14:08

Baillie Gifford now?

Witan Investment closed their savings schemes (WTAN & WPC) a few months ago too.
I switched mine to my other platform but advised a friend to switch his WTAN holdings to a Baillie Gifford IT, like MNKS or SCAM.

Sad really, I would have thought there were space for both platforms and saving schemes, the latter were good for drip-feeding indeed. Now I save my pennies and buy only every now and then to go easy on the charges.

Oh well...

[peterbill] 24/5/2019 12:18

Monks Top Ten Holdings Holdings % of Total Assets1 Naspers 3.52 Amazon.com 3.33 Prudential 3.34 Alibaba 2.75 AIA 2.26 Anthem 2.17 The Schiehallion Fund 2.08 Alphabet 2.09 MasterCard 1.910 Moody's 1.9 Total 25.0



From the Factsheet ...

[peterbill] 24/5/2019 12:08

I hold MNKS and SMT as part of our 5 grandchildrens saving schemes. Ballie Gifford are no longer going to host the schemes and have negotiated a discounted deal with HL so will move all the trusts to HL. The discounted deal runs for 3 years, by then I should know if I will continue with HL or move the investments elsewhere. Currently dripfeed small ammounts each month into each account, which equates to 60 transactions per year so ongoing costs are important, currently nil at Ballie Gifford.

I guess the paperwork and running the saving schemes was just too much and they are going to concentrate on running their portfolio of investemnt trusts and funds.

[robow] 05/10/2018 10:53

Then several in one day.
I am also keen on BNKR and WTAN

[vacendak] 05/10/2018 10:40

@robow
You have just posted something that says: "Buy and hold for ten years or more".
You should be happy to get a post on this thread once every ten years on average. :)

More seriously, this is indeed a good "building block" IT for any portfolio.
I, myself, hold FRCL as ballast in mine and put a bit in WTAN for my son, technically for the future expenses associated with him (school/university fees, etc.)

Still looking into the performance of MNKS, BNKR and LWDB every now and then, out of interest.

[robow] 05/10/2018 08:29

Quiet thread this!
from yesterdays Daily Telegraph
Questor: looking for one trust that you’ll never have to sell? This is the on

Questor investment trust bargain: very wealthy savers can’t afford to switch funds – they would face a huge tax bill. Which one should they buy if they want to hold it forever?

It is, Questor supposes, a nice problem to have: if you have so much money to invest that it cannot be protected from tax in an Isa or pension, and you would therefore face capital gains tax if you had to switch from one fund to another, which “hold for life” fund should you choose?

The question was aired recently by someone whose wealth would certainly exceed the Isa and pensions limits – Peter Hargreaves, the billionaire co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, Britain’s biggest broker.

Hargreaves went so far as to found an asset management firm and recruit a team of fund managers so that he had access to a portfolio to which he could entrust his money for the long term. That firm is Blue Whale and its lead manager, Stephen Yiu, has provided two successful tips for Questor’s Follow the Money column.

But here we focus on investment trusts, so we must ask the question: which quoted portfolio should you buy if, for tax reasons or any other, you won’t want to sell it for years or even decades?

We asked John Husselbee, who runs multi-asset portfolios for Liontrust, for advice. His pick as the best “never sell” trust was Monks, which has been tipped by Questor in the past.

“If this is your remit the first thing you need is patience – you need to respect the fact that there is no such thing as consistency of performance but there is consistency of process and investment style,” he said. “If you want to buy and hold for a decade or more, it doesn’t make a big difference when you buy.

“The second thing you want is diversification. Over such a long period it’s best to be in shares, which means that a globally diversified portfolio of stocks is the answer.” He said there were “plenty to choose from” – options included Witan and Bankers, both also tipped here in the past – but his pick was Monks.

“The rationale starts with the management company, which in this case is Baillie Gifford,” he said. “It is committed to the investment trust structure, as one of the biggest managers of trusts, and its own corporate status as a partnership suggests that it will be around for a long time and not get involved in the mega-mergers seen elsewhere in fund management, which do not always lead to better results for investors.”

He said he preferred managers who had been through a couple of market cycles. However, choosing a very experienced investor does mean that a long-term holder is likely to have to deal with the manager’s retirement at some stage – something that was on Peter Hargreaves’ mind when he picked 40-year-old Stephen Yiu. Monks’ lead manager, Charles Plowden, is 57 and has been in the fund management industry for 35 years.

But Husselbee said the retirement of a manager would be less of a problem when a fund was run on a consistent basis according to a specified process, as he said Monks was. “I’m happy with the strength in depth and established process within a house such as Baillie Gifford. There are checks and balances in place,” he said. “In these circumstances the fund manager becomes more the steward of the process and less the star on whom everything depends.”

He said the firm had long experience of investing in growth stocks, which is very much Monks’ style: its largest holding is Amazon and the top 10 also includes Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Alibaba. There are 59 holdings in all. “You are also getting this portfolio for a very reasonable cost of 0.52pc a year,” Husselbee said.

Questor says: buy

Ticker: MNKS

Share price at close: 833p

[its the oxman] 04/1/2018 15:33

Not quite 800p at year end but hitting 790p today.

[richard xii] 08/11/2017 16:37

SMT is about 100% fast growth and has been effective at selecting the best performers over the past two years.Monks has four investment categories of investments of which one really matches SMT.

[vacendak] 08/11/2017 12:32

I have recently read something in the Daily Mail ThisIsMoney section that MNKS is a very good value-for-money proxy for holding SMT as it has about 70% of cross-holding with its more famous stablemate. Both trusts are run mostly by the same people anyway (Baillie Gifford).

[its the oxman] 08/11/2017 12:20

Similar to SMT now trading at a premium to nav. Perceived as quality I guess.

[its the oxman] 13/10/2017 15:58

Still looking good, 2% discount. My guess for year end c.800p

[tiger20] 26/6/2017 07:58

Cracking set of results-discount around 0.6% very positive on the future returned over 50% with pound weakening and reduction in NAV

[its the oxman] 09/5/2017 19:50

Trading at a premium now. How things have changed.

[its the oxman] 02/5/2017 09:59

Good growth exposure and just keeps going up. Discount reduced. More holdings than SMT I believe so arguably a safer play in that respect.

[peterbill] 16/1/2017 18:18

Last 3 months of share price action with volume

[peterbill] 14/10/2016 18:27

Questor in the Telegraph ...

[luckymouse] 22/9/2016 11:57

blowing past that cons level

[peterbill] 03/7/2016 12:14

With the £ falling, Monks have received a boost in their share price ...
Mostly invested in international/USA markets ... to see the breakdown check the annual report below.

Monks Annual Report 2016

[the juggler] 09/5/2015 13:06

Looks to be heading up again and still at a discount to NAV.

[peterbill] 15/9/2014 19:30

How Scottish independence affects investment trusts ...




Monks a Baillie Gifford global fund, is not listed as the trust is managed in Scotland but incorporated elsewhere.

[peterbill] 12/9/2013 21:28

Fairly good performance for 2013, 310p to 382p ish which is approx a 20% increase (for this year, so far)

[peterbill] 03/2/2013 23:56

A discussion on Monks over on Fool ...




I'll be staying with them as this is a long term investment.

[bluebird123] 13/11/2012 09:56

Thanks for the correction and additional info there Darwenlad.

I've recently bought in and as votes of confidence go Smith's is certainly a large one