Member Info for DorsetLSE

Yes you can have an ISA account with Fundsmith. Have a look on the website. The only drawback is that since you can only have one ISA per year you can only invest in FS that year so I opened one and then transferred a load across from HL . One thing to note is that you will hold T class shares in FS direct but I class on other platforms like HL so when I did it I had to do a transfer in cash although it might be different now. HL would be charging me nearly £2.5k a year in platform charges if I was still with them

Any suggestions as to why the shares are at a 9% discount?

@ Everglade Fundsmith is something I started buying back in 2011 and just keeps cruising up and I have never sold it or taken a profit. I stopped adding to it about 4 years ago as it was starting to get too large a proportion of my portfolio but it kept on growing. It's all held directly with FS so no platform charges and the nature of the holdings gives it an element of defensiveness. I have to admit that I did have a large position in Woodford but luckily jumped ship in 2016 as his performance flattened and put that in Fundsmith too. Pity I hadn't discovered SMT at the time though.

@ Everglade Fundsmith is something I started buying back in 2011 and just keeps cruising up and I have never sold it or taken a profit. I stopped adding to it about 4 years ago as it was starting to get too large a proportion of my portfolio but it kept on growing. It's all held directly with FS so no platform charges and the nature of the holdings gives it an element of defensiveness. I have to admit that I did have a large position in Woodford but luckily jumped ship in 2016 as his performance flattened and put that in Fundsmith too. Pity I hadn't discovered SMT at the time though.

I have been investing for over 45 years and have a simple strategy go with your winners and be ruthless about ditching things that don't deliver decent growth every year. So I now out of a £1m ISA portfolio my largest holdings are £520k in Fundsmith, £160k in SMT , £170k in SSON. £80k Rathbone Global Opps. I have always been fully invested so virtually no cash apart from a few £k in my current account. I get the impression on this forum that there are quite a few day traders here who would find my portfolio quite bizarre.

I have started selling down my position in MNKS it's gone nowhere for a year and last years performance was on the back of Tesla.

Watch out for "head in the clouds " syndrone :)

@loadsoflolly Good strategy if you time the market. Problem is that you never know when it's reached bottom until it's going up again.

Or a bit of both perhaps? I hold over £150k in each at the moment but I wonder how much of SMT's performance is down to a single company ie Tesla?

I hold my Fundsmith with them directly which avoids HL's fees.

@robleo No inheritances apart from £50k in 2016 and no business sales. I am 73 and it's all been from regular contributions over the years from salary (and now pension) and following successful fund managers like Antony Bolton, Woodford ( in the early days but jumped ship in 2016), then other names like Nimmo, Buxton and Terry Smith (I now have about £500k in Fundsmith). I have always run with my winners - which is why I have so much in Fundsmith . I keep very close eye on the managers and I will drop a manager as soon as performance plateaus. I run a number of fantasy portfolios where I invest a notional £100 on Jan 1st each year in trusts that I am interested in following so I can see daily how they are all doing. SMT is currently slightly behind Fundsmith in 2021 on 13%. My biggest holdings outside Fundsmith at present are SMT and SSON (which has nearly doubled since inception 3 years ago). If I was to voice a concern about SMT and some of the other BG funds it would be that a lot of recent gains have been on the back of a very successful punt on Tesla. Lets hope they continue to be lucky. :)

I have been investing since the 70s and all I can say is that there is no normal for things to revert to. We seem to go from one crisis to the next be it the 70's oil crisis, the 87 crash, 90's recessions, dot com boom, 2008 etc etc. The only thing I have never done is to move into cash or gold and try to time the market or guess the future. I keep fully invested in equities, no bonds, no asset allocation, no BTL, no emerging markets and try to follow good fund managers . I now have ISAs worth nearly £1m so good luck to everyone for the next 45 years.

Did anyone else top up yesterday?

Evergrande shares suspended this morning on Hong Kong exchange. As for Alibaba, yes it could become a trillion $ company but only if the CCP wants to be. That's the difference, China is now a different investing climate to the rest of the world and it's not clear what the rules are going to be when it settles down.

The worrying thing is that he was right. One wonders whether BG is getting to that stage sometimes seen with big successful organisations where they start to believe their own propaganda eg IBM in the 90's, Nokia etc

Makes interesting reading, was he pushed or did he jump?
https://citywire.co.uk/funds-insider/news/markson-brown-i-felt-pressured-to-hold-tencent-and-alibaba-at-baillie-gifford/a1561233?ref=citywire-money-latest-news-list

I am certainly not ditching SMT, just being wary of the 15% China exposure. I currently have about £150k invested in SMT but unlikely to add to new money until the China story settles down.

The Evergrande scandal is a good reason to get out of China, there is talk of it being a £300bn issue . I track a few China ITs and some are down 30% in 2021. Hopefully the SMT exposure at around 15% isn'ttoo vulnerable to fallout.
Comment in today's FT
Stocks took a beating yesterday, and consensus seems to be that Evergrande’s stumble is the main reason. But in financial markets, prices lead and explanations follow. Only in the fullness of time, and often not even then, can we isolate the catalysts for market moves. That said, the Evergrande mess is mighty interesting

Actually I have just realised that this is not far short of 2000p and the third anniversary of this trust is in October ! To double you money in three years means a compound rate of over 20%

Not much discussion about this excellent trust which slowly trundles on with less of the volatility of say SMT