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Yes I listened to the Webinar and it was the usual stuff about the potential for massive growth as long as you take a long term view. It's the same with all fund managers, their main motivation is inflows as the bigger the fund the bigger their take so selling the long term story is what it's all about. Not a mention of the huge drop in share price over the past few months. But at least they are starting to do more foreign trips so that's nice.

Its on Zoom use the Webinar ID: 960 2339 8737 and Passcode: 051058

Anyone managed to connect?

Anyone else registered for the SMT webinar on Thursday at 1300? Should be an interesting distraction from listening to Boris

unless the figures are misleading, SMT is currently at a discount of about 10%

I was lucky and dumped Woodford in 2016 basically because his performance was flat. I originally had about £100k in Invesco when he was their star fund manager. He left to start his own company in 2014 so I put £50k with him and left the other £50k behind. Things were OK for a year or so and then his performance flattened so I sold out, luckily near the peak in 2016 and put it in Fundsmith. A bit later on I pulled out of Invesco too as they were also going nowhere and put that in Fundsmith. I now have about £500k in FS and I know it's too much but it keeps on delivering and I stopped adding to it a few years ago.

I have been investing long enough to have learned three things.
1 Fund managers always talk about a rosy future for their sector with exciting opportunities etc
2. They also talk about long timescales.
3. Their main motivation is inflows.
I can't say I blame them otherwise we wouldn't invest in their funds but my success over the years has been to hook onto the coat tails of star managers such as Antony Bolton, Buxton, Neil Woodford (yes for a while), Nick Train, Terry Smith etc and jumping ship when things start to look wobbly. For me despite my current £90k stake in SMT and £10K in BG LTGG BG is on the wobble list and I am reducing my exposure slightly.

I have been investing for 45 years and now aged 73 built up a £1m ISA portfolio. I must say that these jam tomorrow messages of 5+ year timescales from BG are wearing a bit thin. Measured from 01/01/21 all of my BG investments are underwater. Luckily I got out of most of them early (eg EWI is now down 40%). The only stars in my portfolio over this period are Fundsmith, SSON, BUT, Blue Whale, S&P500 ETF and Rathbone GG. I have said this before but a lot of BG performance in 2020 was due to a lucky bet on Tesla. I still have £90k of SMT but it's getting too volatile for me having lost nearly 15% since Jan 1st. Luckily I don't need the portfolio as I have good pension income so I can hang on in there. Good luck everyone and hold your nerve. :)

I tend to agree, last year I had a BG America, BG Glob Disc, BG LTGG, BGCG and SMT. Towards the end of 2021 I pulled out of everything except BG LTGG and SMT and had started offloading SMT but obviously not fast enough as I still have £115k in there. So far in 2022 SMT is my worst performer and has lost over 14% and my portfolio as a whole is down 10%. My best performers at the moment are BUT (only down 1%) and Fundsmith down 8%

A guy who ran a big company pension scheme told me that all the figures he had access to showed that generally, the earlier you retire the longer you live

Compared with a lot of forums the people on this one (SMT) seem to be a lot more active. So I was wondering what other Investment Trusts you people are holding at the moment ? In my case currently SMT, SSON, BUT, IUSA (S&P500)

Sold about £12k worth this morning, normally I would see the current situation as a buying opportunity but I had already been planning on trimming my £140k SMT holding at 13% of my portfolio as I have often thought that BG in general have been living off the glitter dust called Tesla and the volatility of SMT was getting to me. As I write SMT is 14% down already in 2022 and 5% down from 01/01/21 . I am beginning to think that an investment in BG is about whether they will find the next blockbuster or not.

Some very positive statements here presumably by folk trying to talk up the price, however the FT over the past few weeks has a more negative view and even quoted analysts who are having difficulty valuing the company. I have a relative who works for THG in a central function to whom I spoke over Xmas and told me that it was difficult see whether the business was in good or bad shape. I guess the financial engineers have been hard at work.

At 10% SMT is the worst performing part of my portfolio this year and easily the most volatile. Yes I know it had a spectacular year in 2020 but that was largely down to Tesla. By comparison this year S&P500 tracker 29%, BUT 29%, Fundsmith 22% , SSON 18%, Blue Whale 19%. L'Oreal 30% and there are a few others. I know most of us are in for the long haul but keep it in perspective. I hold £140k in SMT so I am committed but I might trim it down a bit.

SMT has been very volatile recently and as of today it has gained 14% in 2021 which puts it near the bottom of most of the funds in my portfolio (eg Fundsmith, SSON, BUT, S&P500, Blue Whale, Rathbone Global have all done better). Admittedly, 2020 was spectacular but looking back over the last 5 and 10 years there have been long periods of middling performance and I was wondering if the performance in 2018-20 was really just down to Tesla and if anyone carried out that analysis? Before I get accused of short termism I have been investing for 45 years and currently have about £150k or 15% of my portfolio in SMT.

They seem to be issuing a lot of equity these days. Looks like they are struggling to reduce the 3% premium?

Not sure that I believe some of the metrics on this site, the share price shown is often at odds with other sources and some buy trades I have put through have shown up as sells

We all like to see a steadily rising share price but ultimately all that matters is the price when you sell. Up until then the lower the better if you are investing new money. However I am as bad as the rest in hoping for a steady rise but that's psychology for you.

From what I recall from one of the SMT webinars their position is that they act like a venture capital company where they invest in small companies pre IPO. They admit that this is risky and that most of their investments go nowhere but this is far outweighed by the few that make it big, the classic one being Tesla where one report puts the BG outfit making £24bn overall. This of course, relies on a long investment horizon. To some extent this is not that different to the direction Woodford was going in but he had a few things against him like using an OEIC structure, using the Guernsey stock market to get around holdings limits and most of all investing in fairy tale no hope businesses.

My take on the digital age is that we are still in the early stages of exploiting digital technology after a false start with the dot com boom in 2000. I feel that we are where the Victorians were in the 1850's when steam and rail travel started to open up the economy with lots of startups and company successes and failures on the way. The only real difference is that in those days the products were more tangible eg a railway rather than something promised on a PowerPoint slide.