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My comments about BT was more about Tesla than SMT as a whole and about the emotion of buy and hold which can be dangerous. I gave up listening to fund webinars a few years ago since they all come out with the same story about buying potential and being in there for the long run which feeds their agenda of earning fees which they still do even if performance is poor. I am as guilty as most of you for stuff I should have offloaded years ago but I do find the SMT shareholders here to be rather refreshingly different to a lot of my other holdings where hardly any comments are posted. :)

I know that a few forum members think that I am overly conservative but it comes from a long history of seeing companies come and go. I remember in the late 90's having a block of about 2,500 BT shares and 3G was going to transform the communications world with the same narrative as 5G now. The shares were around £15 and I was about to sell when a BT exec told me that the analysts were predicting it would go over £17 so I hung on, and on and on. I finally gave up a a couple of years ago at around £2.50 and now they stand at £1.20. I am always reminded of this when I see a comment like "next time the share price is above 12" especially with a volatile share like SMT. You must always ask the hard question about any stock that "if this was cash in my hand today would I buy it today" and not just hand on in there hoping. Incidentally Tesla now has a PE of over 40 which is now double the S&P500

I can still hear the cannons :)

For what it's worth remember the old adage "buy on the sound of cannons and sell on the sound of trumpets" :)

Investors should always be nervous :) At age 74 I have been investing for 45 years and have luckily dodged a number of bullets over the years (like Woodford). I have a large portfolio but as I have DB pensions I don't need to touch it so it has become a sort of hobby /game for me and keeps me busy. SMT is less than 5% of my portfolio but still over £40k worth and my worst performer this year

Reading a piece recently where it was pointed out that SMT has a lot of investments in unlisted companies (which we are all aware of) but as the value of the listed stuff reduces BG are hitting limits on how much unlisted they are allowed to hold in the portfolio. Selling a position in an unlisted company is difficult (as a certain Mr Woodford discovered). Makes me nervous.

Yes an FT report says that traditional car manufacturers are starting to catch up although Tesla is still way ahead.

Down 30% YTD and " 14 analysts offering 12-month price forecasts for Moderna Inc have a median target of 185.50, with a high estimate of 506.00 and a low estimate of 101.00 " Pharma is one of the most difficult areas to predict as there are so many unknowns. That's why the big outfits like GSK act like investment trusts and do little internal research but rely on small startups with good ideas to take the risks before funding extensive trials.

You go to the ST for business news? You should start reading the FT. I take it every day and when I read other papers they are so simplistic by comparison.

Just a point to throw into the discussion but in yesterday's FT there was a piece about Nestle where over the past 15 years they have spent 76Bn swiss francs in share buybacks and paid out 95bn in dividends and the share price has been falling for the last few years. Sounds like a strategy to destroy shareholder value.

No ITs at a discount don't all do buybacks . Some like Brunner have been around for 100 years and have a policy of not doing buybacks and run with sizeable 10-15% discounts. Also if you think about it, unless you are buying back with spare cash then selling assets in an IT to buy back shares in yourself is a bit illogical

Some commentators regard share buy backs as an admission of failure to find ways of investing spare cash. Also signalling to the market that you are doing buy backs raises the share price so that they are less effective. I know that there is a tax argument versus dividends but if there is unused cash available then I would prefer it returned as a dividend then I can decide where to invest it.

I have been investing for over 45 years and if there is one thing I have learned its that funds and managers come and go. I have been lucky to have followed some of the big names like Antony Bolton, Nimmo, Terry Smith, Buxton even Woodford (for a time) and done very well but if I look back at my holdings say 10 or 20 or 30 years ago the names are unrecognisable. What I am trying to say is that SMT might not be the long term success that you hope for so keep a careful eye on it and don't bet the farm on it. I have been criticised before for saying that there is some evidence that SMT is a one trick pony having been successful with Tesla and the mantra from the managers is as ever "you need to take the long view" but where is the next Tesla? Moderna was supposed to be the big hope but that's taking a long time. So I wish everyone future success but don't be blinded by BG's previous success.

I have just reduced my SMT holding down to £40k At age 74 I am starting to have a different view on long term holdings as I can't wait forever.
Also this makes interesting reading.
https://citywire.com/investment-trust-insider/news/james-carthew-trusts-like-scottish-mortgage-could-do-more-to-narrow-discounts/a2401224?section=investment-trust-insider

Just a thought but I note that a few of my ITs including SMT are currently doing buy backs presumably to reduce the discount and raise the share price. Whilst I understand the reasons for doing this It struck me a slightly bizarre that (unless you are using spare cash) you are selling some of the Trust's underlying holdings to generate cash which you then use to buy back the Trust's own shares and that the Trust's shares should rise in value even though they now represent a company with fewer assets.

Discussions about cash liquidity in SMT are a missing the point that a lot of the portfolio is tied up on positions in non public companies where extracting yourself from a position in one of these can be a very difficult and slow process. It's similar to a REIT in some ways. Add to this the difficulty of valuing some of these pre IPOs anyway and I often wonder how a share price is arrived at.

Quite a few ITs are trading at a discount at the moment so don't use that as your criteria for buying SMT, however I take the view that you are buying the underlying assets cheap which can't be a bad thing. In my view SMT is more like a venture capital company in that it invests in a lot of early stage private companies (where valuation is difficult) in the hope that some of them take off spectacularly. It can be very volatile .

I detect a trend in the messaging here that things will be better in one, three or ten years etc. IF there is one thing that I have learned in my investing career of 45 years it's that there is no return to "normal" (just as the Russia business started when we all thought that we had got over COVID). When the Russia war is somehow concluded there will be something else that will come up that we have not thought of so for me the important thing is to invest in fundamentals and not speculate on where share prices might be. So keep things like SMT as a small part of your portfolio and mainly invest in the boring stuff. Oh and hope that BG find another Tesla.

I am 74 and have started reduced my holding which is about 6% of m portfolio. They say live as if you will die tomorrow and plan as if you will live forever. So despite having had a minor heart attack 4 months ago I am considering buying myself a replacement road bike :)

I don't trust the buy/sell figures on here. I have made a few trades over the last few months of various shares and often a buy shows up as a sell or vice versa. I suppose the problem is that for every seller there is a buyer so what does it mean anyway?