by Holly McKechnie, Investors Chronicle, August 8, 2025:
Global equity trusts have had to sustain a number of shocks so far this year, from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs to the launch of DeepSeek AI in January. However, on the whole performance for this group has been relatively strong over the past six months, with some outliers..
To consider what is and is not working, we analysed the top 10 holdings of some of the biggest, and most popular global funds on the market to determine how fund managers are currently positioning themselves.
Inevitably, Magnificent Seven stocks make up a sizeable chunk of most global equity fund portfolios, as the chart below shows, and, over time, the funds which are overexposed to these tech stocks have tended to outperform..
In contrast, Alliance Witan (ALW) has an underweight exposure to both the US and Magnificent Seven stocks and has had disappointing interim results for 2025. James Carthew, head of investment companies at QuotedData, points towards its underweight Magnificent Seven exposure as the reason for this, while the trust’s chair, Dean Buckley, blames the portfolio’s US dollar exposure..
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